Tag: punk rock

Brisbane Trio The Disgruntled Taxpayers Transform Old-School Aussie Punk Into Modern Anthems

This week for Playing Melbourne, we’re taking a detour up the East Coast of Australia to Queensland, where 3-piece band The Disgruntled Taxpayers are based in the capital city, Brisbane. We’re taking this long, humid and scenic trip because a couple of weeks ago, my beloved Melbourne community radio station 3RRR played “Fried Chicken Gave Me Boobs,” which laments the consequences of hormone-pumped poultry resulting in some alarming (ahem) developments. Before you write this off as boys-making-jokes à la Weird Al Yankovich novelty, hear me out. The track is wiry, angular, dynamic and a deprecatingly modern political protest.

At first, I’d wondered: was this an obscure Iggy Pop song I’ve never heard, or some amazing relic of the ’70s punk scene? In fact, the Disgruntled Taxpayers formed just over 12 years ago in Brisbane, their sound and energy that of three musicians who are thoroughly comfortable and attuned to each other. Not a relic, but a living, raging, rocking beast of an act that channels the best of The Stooges or The Ramones along with the hilariously sardonic political commentary of Melbourne’s own Snog.

Jake Donehue fronts the band on vocals and guitars, older brother Paul Donehue is on drums and Mark Heady tears up the atmosphere on bass. “Fried Chicken” features on their most recent EP, $5 Toaster, which came out in 2018. It followed up their 2014 debut, Over-ambitious, Selfish Corporate Whore; both offer biting, off-the-cuff observations on the absurd.

“I’ve got a book of thoughts,” Jake Donehue explains. “The best songs are the ones that fall out of you in 15 minutes flat. We jam as a band, we’ve got a good little set up where we rehearse, experiment a lot, and so a lot of the songs and riffs come out of that. The world’s such a ridiculous place – it just keeps on giving, so we’ll never run out of material.”

That includes new songs the band has “banked up and ready to go” for their next album, which they intend to release in mid to late 2021. “We’re excited about playing new material. It’s gonna be even more stupid than the last one,” Donehue warns. “But, before we record the album, we want to get gigs in and be match ready. I think we fill a void. I’ve tried writing serious songs, it doesn’t work.”

What does work is the sardonic humour of songs like “Crabs Are Much Better When They’re at the Beach” which lampoons a sexually transmitted disease while also celebrating the little seaside creatures that “entertain your kids.” Or “Insecure Men,” with its crunchy guitar riffs and throaty refrain: “Look at my clothes and look at my car!”

The band gigs in Brisbane, northern New South Wales and Queensland towns, like Toowoomba (“always fun”), Lismore, and Ipswich (“we’ve got a little following out there, which is cool”). Currently, the border restrictions due to a recent COVID-19 outbreak in northern New South Wales has ensured no artists are doing interstate gigs without extensive applications, testing and quarantining; thus, the trio have been gigging significantly less than usual. Perhaps the only thing to do is to listen to $5 Toaster and have a laugh.

“You either laugh or you cry, don’t you?” Donehue suggests.

The band had played a “stinking hot” gig in Brisbane the night before our interview though, so as stifling as the restrictions are, they’re not a total impediment to live music in Queensland. “People are a bit sketchy going out. It’s good we’re still rolling, but it’s frustrating 30,000 people can go to a footy game but there’s only 50 people in a gig,” Donehue says. “Considering there’s no international bands here for a while, it’s good for Aussie bands at the moment, so we’re taking advantage of that. Last night, it was 50 people maximum and everyone sat down.”

It’s no surprise to learn that the Disgruntled Taxpayers are fans of Australian punk bands formed in the 1980s, typified by Radio Birdman, Hard-Ons and The Meanies. “We’re all big Midnight Oil fans, early Midnight Oil,” says Donehue. “Our bass player ran away from home as a teenager to follow them on tour, actually! We used to sneak into gigs as teenagers, like Cosmic Psychos, The Celibate Rifles and all that sort of stuff. I was also into jazz, though. Mark is more into heavier stuff whereas Paul is more into world music. We don’t want to be constricted by genre, ever.”

Donehue’s punk rock ethos dictates that he doesn’t seek to please everyone, not even fans. It’s an approach that has, however improbably, attracted a broad and loyal fan base. “We’ve got a lot of young people in their late teens who like us. I’m mid-40s and there’s a lot of people my age as well,” admits Donehue. “The Brisbane music scene is really inclusive. I lived in Sydney during my 20s and it’s a lot more cliquey, and Melbourne can be a little like that, but up here it’s too hot to be fashionable. Everyone is welcome. A lot of people come to cheer up. If that’s what I can do for the world, then so be it.”

The Disgruntled Taxpayers, with their bank of new material and enough gigs to keep them “match ready,” plan to record their next LP with Jeff Lovejoy at his Blackbox Recording Studios. “Once we start it, it will be a pretty quick process, a couple of months,” Donehue predicts. Lovejoy is a great asset to have on board, having worked in both engineering and production for Powderfinger, Shutterspeed, Wolfmother and Black Mustang amongst other notable Australian bands.

Despite their larrikin image, Donehue says band affairs are mostly a wholesome endeavor. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a fight,” he says, adding that his bandmates are “both family men, so they’ve got that going on as well. There’s not much rock ‘n’ roll going on. I have to make it up for the other two – it’s ridiculous!”

Follow The Disgruntled Taxpayers on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Cheekface Assert Boundaries with Cultural Critique on Sophomore LP ‘Emphatically No.’

“Listen to your heart (no)/keep on keeping on (no)/just say no to drugs (no)/eat a healthy lunch (no),” goes the chorus of “‘Listen To Your Heart.’ ‘No.'” It’s the first song on Emphatically No., the sophomore LP from LA-based indie rock trio Cheekface, out today via New Professor. Guitarist/singer Greg Katz half-sings, half-speaks in an almost monotone voice, his deadpan delivery amplifying the humor of the lyrics, which encapsulate the spirit of the album: quirky comedy, rejection of conventional wisdom, and defiance, sometimes for its own sake.

The fun, upbeat song, like much of the album, was written partly in earnest and partly as a joke. The earnest aspect was borne from bassist/singer Amanda Tannen’s difficulties saying “no” and drawing boundaries. “‘Listen to Your Heart.’ ‘No.’ came about from feeling this rise in self-care and all these people just telling you what to do, what’s best for you, and it’s actually okay to say ‘no’ to those things if you’re not feeling that,” she says.

The title of the song, however, first came from Katz. It had been lingering in his notebook for a while, then he blurted it out while working on guitar chords with Tannen, and she immediately identified it as the foundation of a song. “That response of ‘no’ just to this generic good advice that you would give anyone, and then the automatic impulse of disgust and refusal even though you know the advice is pretty good — it just has that spark of truth and humor that we try to find to build a song around,” he says.

It’s a silly yet oddly empowering message: no matter how reasonable, even irrefutable someone’s advice is, you still don’t have to take it. This is also the attitude behind the album title and much of the music on it. “We’re all always trying to be better about boundaries,” says drummer Mark “Echo” Edwards. “I have a hard time telling people no, and so it’s a reminder, it’s like a little mantra to repeat to yourself that it’s okay to say no, and a lot of times, it’s better to say no.”

The next song on the album, “Best Life,” has a similar theme of rejecting self-care culture, taking the listener through various scenes as the narrator laughs through therapy, declines to smile because it may be contagious (but “so is yawning”), and gets a Gucci logo stick-and-poke because “it’s cheaper than therapy,” melodically concluding, “it’s your best life if it’s the life that you’re living right now.”

“The concept of living your best life is something that I have always thought was sort of funny because there is no other life than the one you are now living — there’s no better or worse version of it; it just is,” says Katz. “The whole memeification of mental health and self-help by our generation, which distilled it down to meaningless drivel like ‘best life’ that has literally no meaning when you think about it, was sort of the jumping-off point for the concept of the song.”

Other songs on the LP examine heavier cultural and political issues, but still with the same absurdist humor: “Original Composition” addresses humans’ indifference to environmental collapse, “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Calabasas” calls attention to the hypocrisy of political discourse, and “Big Big Friend” mocks male privilege with lines like “I earned a dude’s degree/by buying a notebook and sneezing on my things/I come from a long line of people/a long line of people who procreated.”

Most of Emphatically No. was recorded and mixed by Greg Cortez at LA’s New Monkey Studio (which was formerly owned by Elliott Smith) between 2019 and 2020. The album incorporates electronic instruments like the Mellotron and eccentric sound bites like a dog barking, aggressive banging on a keyboard, and repetitive, chanted words like “everything is normal.”

“My goal musically is to make things feel good and make people want to move in a way that lines up with the larger philosophical approach,” says Edwards. “Despite the sometimes bleak subject matter, there’s still humor, there’s still joy.”

Katz considers Cheekface a mix of punk rock, power pop, and proto punk, citing the “great American talk-singers,” like Lou Reed and Jonathan Richman, as influences – you can hear it the way Katz sings the lines “we are writers! creatives! we work remotely!/I am furiously Juuling™ on the coffee shop patio!” in “Best Life.” The Talking Heads are also a band favorite; “Emotional Rent Control” incorporates the bass line and drum parts from “Psycho Killer,” an idea the members got after hearing these familiar sounds sampled in Selena Gomez’s “Bad Liar.”

Cheekface originated in 2017, drawing its early inspiration from Trump’s inauguration. After attending the Women’s March together, Katz and Tannen wrote their second single and most streamed song on Spotify, “Dry Heat/Nice Town,” about coming to grips with rising authoritarianism and violence in society. The band released its first album, Therapy Island, in 2019, and released an Audiotree live session in 2020. They’ve already written the bulk of their next album, though Katz warns his fans: “Just like everyone’s favorite band, we’re gonna get worse.”

Follow Cheekface on Twitter for ongoing updates.

Grumpster Finds Solance On the Edges of Debut LP Underwhelmed

 

 

Over deli sandwiches, Falyn Walsh of Grumpster told me that she thinks some people are meant to become friends.

I had met her, along with Lalo Gonzalez Deetz (guitar) and Noel Agtane (drums) at Gilman Brewing some hours earlier, where we discussed the Oakland band’s debut album, Underwhelmed.

The night before, I had gone to their sold-out show at iconic Berkeley venue 924 Gilman, where the trio gleefully performed their longest set ever to an audience with the ceaseless kinetic energy of an ant colony. I saw no less than three green-dyed heads, an accidental homage to Walsh’s short green crop that made it seem as if the place was being slowly overtaken by punky sprites.

At one point, the band held up the Gilman’s DIY SOLD OUT sign, grinning ear to ear. It was, unquestionably, a night of triumph that was still palpable the next day, tired bodies notwithstanding.

Speaking of bodies, Underwhelmed, besides relentlessly espousing its titular theme, is a very bodily album. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it embraces full-on gore, but the concept of body-as-antagonist is clear. The most obvious example of this comes in “Nausea,” where Walsh details what feels like a weeks-long panic attack that has her asking “What’s become of me?/Tear my organs/from my body/the world/will finally/dispose of me.” The song later dives into one of the best metaphors on the record, where Walsh interrupts the wall of guitar with this exhausted, repeated warning: “And my hands shake like earthquakes/so stop telling me to get a grip.” Some references are a little more hidden, though this may only be because they lack the commentary of a live performance. For example, in one of my favorite moments of the release show, Walsh introduced “Put Me to Sleep” by yelling, “If you have ever had to deal with PMS, GET IN THE FUCKING PIT!”

The titular song sets the tone for this all very well, a little three-act performance before getting to the meat of the record. “If I was a pig I’d be the target of your slaughter/I’m shit out of luck/because you don’t give a fuck about me,” accuses Walsh over a sparse riff in Act I. Act II comes when she begins to detail the destructive effect this person has over her, guitars coming faster now, the whole thing sounding like a mini soundtrack for two people circling each other at a party. It’s not clear whether the antagonist in question is a former romantic partner or a friend, but the central point here is that it doesn’t matter — Grumpster is outfitting their j’accuse thesis in hard guitars and drums to lend some release to a very slow-burn sense of perpetual disappointment with everyone.

Act III is the reprise, where Walsh recalls her old bright-eyed, bushy-tailed self with little nostalgia. “Too bad,” she sings in a dry-eyed deadpan. “Nobody ever apologizes/until you’ve drank yourself to death/I guess your friends all care once you’re six feet underground.”

“Roots” is a stand-out song, and absolutely killed at the Gilman show — though not for the reasons you would expect. On the heels of a quick explanation from Walsh, the audience — some of whom had clearly done this before — started pairing up, hands on waists and shoulders, couples and friends and probably a few strangers. It was time for the slow dance.

Well, slow is relative, but watching a dozen-odd odd couples half sock-hop, half-mosh to the “Roots” rolling-hills riff is truly one of my favorite show moments ever.

Beyond the body and untrustworthy friends, another notable antagonist on the record is the mythical, unnamed “town” or “city,” such a mainstay detractor in punk records that its mentions in “Underwhelmed” and single “Crumbling” must be delivered with a touch of irony. “The city took my house and its people took my things/my neighbors took my books and all my shiny rings,” Walsh states on the former with the air of a disillusioned storybook character.

Yet even as misery has taken on a monolithic, mythical quality on Underwhelmed, so too have the people and places that Grumpster finds solace in. Deetz, for one, grew up a stone’s throw from 924 Gilman. “It was always very mysterious to me,” he said of the venue. Citing Green Day as his gateway to playing punk music, it comes as no surprise that inching ever so slowly towards the Gilman and its unofficial rites of passage was inevitable for Deetz. So too, apparently, was meeting Walsh.

“I came on a trip to San Francisco in 2016.” Walsh recalls. “I went to a show at Gilman. Lalo [Deetz] and I saw each other at the show and we were like, ‘this person looks interesting,’ but we didn’t meet… I went back to Massachusetts, bought a one way plane ticket, moved out here, and then like two months after moving we met each other… That’s the cosmic connection, dude!”

Agtane came from a musical family and had tried out various instruments throughout the years. Despite the many guitars and basses around his family home, Agtane’s own cosmic moment came in his late teens. “Once I started playing the drums,” he says, “I was like, ‘Oh. Yeah. This is supernatural.’”

All three of them speak of music with palpable love, even deification. Not to say that they are particularly woo-woo about it, but it’s clear that music inspires in Grumpster the sort of religious zeal that enables the Jehovah’s Witnesses at Powell BART to stand for hours in heeled shoes behind a table of leaflets and signs that ask, WILL SUFFERING END?

Well, probably not. As Underwhelmed reluctantly states, event if Agtane, Deetz, and Walsh have found cosmic kinship with the Bay Area and each other, that feeling of circling the drain can creep up on you even in the best of places — which is why its so damn disheartening enough to inspire a full record. Because if you can’t find solace here, where can you? We can only keep trying, and keep making music and art when it feels like we can’t.

Grumpster will be supporting Anti-Flag starting in May. Follow the band on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

PLAYING THE BAY: Grumpster is “Crumbling” in New Video

In the music video for “Crumbling,” by Oakland punk band Grumpster, lead singer Fayln Walsh tears off her baggy ’80s color-block shirt during the final breakdown, flinging her limbs with detached singularity in front of a golden-hour graveyard. Cut in between shots of the band playing live, this is the first time in the video we see Walsh drop some of her stone-faced lyric delivery as she walks throughout Oakland, passing through parking garages and convenience stores, plucking Pepperidge Farm cookies from as shelf as she mouths all of my tears have now turned black/and I forgot how to laugh.

Spiraling around her like off-track atoms are her bandmates Lalo Gonzalez Deetz (guitar), Noel Agtane (drums) and various friends, who intermittently palm her in the shoulder while tossing around a frisbee or shooting water guns, caught up in their very own picnic while Walsh continues her tired-eyed march towards the camera.

The line the agony and the apathy/have been dragging’ me down precedes the song’s chorus, one of its strongest — and funniest — lines. Grumpster seem to be leaning into their pathos for this single, the first offering from their full length Underwhelmed, slated for release in October on Asian Man Records. With lines like I’ll sit and I’ll mope/and I’m all out of hope and/I’ll die in this town, it’s hard not to grin in recognition of some good old-fashioned Bay Area kid melodrama — because at the end of the day, there are much worse places to stew in your own dissatisfaction.

Grumpster has been releasing solid work for a while now, with “Crumbling” coming on the heels of February’s “Strangers.” Though the latter appears untethered from any larger project, it does serve as a clear bridge between “Crumbling” and some of the band’s earlier work, which would be hard-pressed to embrace the sparse instrumental drop that accompanies the chorus on “Crumbling.” Walsh has an interesting vocal delivery, her voice almost always level and matter-of-fact, even as the words come fast, like someone telling you the bare-bones version of a story to avoid breaking down completely. “Strangers” and 2017’s “Kairos” were looser offerings, Walsh allowing her voice to rise in exasperation and mid-crush panic, respectively. While “Crumbling” is catchy — and that instrumental breakdown at the end is killer — it will be interesting to see if Walsh decides to keep herself at arm’s length from the listener for the album’s duration.

PLAYING THE BAY: Ivy Jeanne Is Not For Sale

Ivy Jeanne wears many hats. Political femme activist, lead singer of Black Rainbow, muralist, and longtime San Francisco resident, are just a few ways to describe her momentum and dedication to our local community. We chat on Clarion Alley, in front of her very own mural (influenced by the controversial Dropbox soccer field incident in 2014).

Jeanne talks about her experiences touring and organizing activist work around a central ideal that “THIS CITY IS NOT FOR SALE.” Much like the message of her mural, Ivy Jeanne’s art fights for folks who stand up against gentrification. In recent years, Jeanne has also participated as an artist and coordinator in collaboration with Rebecca Solnit, Erick Lyle, Sarah Schulman and more to release Streetopia, an anthology detailing a vision for the future of San Francisco.

Check out our interview with her below to hear more about her.

PLAYING BLOOMINGTON: Why Bloomington? An Intro to Hoosier Punk

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]

MX-80 Out of the Tunnel LP
The back cover of MX-80 Sound LP Out of the Tunnel. Photo by Kim Torgerson (c. 1980)

I moved from Brooklyn, New York to Bloomington, Indiana in the fall of 2014 to pursue a PhD in Ethnomusicology at Indiana University – in a nutshell, to study music within its cultural context. Coming from a background in music journalism and with a life-long interest in punk and underground music, I began to explore the Bloomington punk scene. What I found was a scene that looked nothing like the one I had encountered in New York, and certainly wasn’t trying to be that. I decided to make the local underground and punk scene the topic of my academic research and dissertation.

I include this information about my process and position not for narcissistic reasons, but for clarity and transparency.  Who we are – our positions, our experiences, our backgrounds – largely determines how we write, who we write about, and why we write. This column, therefore, is my interpretation and presentation of the Bloomington underground music and punk scene, and all of the weirdos and misfits that constitute it. But enough about me. What follows here is a (very) condensed history of the Bloomington punk scene and why it is so incredibly awesome.

1974. Patti Smith recorded Horses, the Ramones began playing at CBGB, and the New York Dolls released their second studio album. That same year, guitarist Bruce Anderson and bassist Dale Sophiea formed MX-80 Sound and began to perform their unique brand of art rock at local music venues and houses across Bloomington. By 1976, they were circulating a fanzine, Big Hits. Considered by many to be the pioneers of the local underground music scene, MX-80 was soon joined by proto-punk band the Gizmos (the first iteration), who began recording with Gulcher Records in 1976.

Collaboration took place between Bloomington punks and the punks of nearby Lafayette and Indianapolis. From Lafayette, post-punk band Dow Jones and the Industrials recorded a split LP, Hoosier Hysteria (1980), with the Gizmos (the second iteration). Bands from Bloomington and Lafayette traveled to Indianapolis to perform at the legendary music venue, Crazy Al’s. The Gizmos (1), MX-80 Sound, and then later The Gizmos (2), Dow Jones and the Industrials, The Zero Boys, The Jetsons, The Last Four (4) Digits, The Premature Babies, The Panics, Latex Novelties, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Dancing Cigarettes, and many others, constituted a vibrant scene that is still celebrated today through band poster exhibits, roundtables about the history of Gulcher records, reunion concerts, re-issues, and compilation CDs.

When listening to early Bloomington punk, the Gizmos’ (1978-1981) album is telling: Never Mind the Sex Pistols, Here’s the Gizmos. While the Bloomington and Indiana dirtbags were certainly influenced by the dirtbags in New York, London, and Los Angeles, they distanced themselves from these powerful urban centers and created a sound that was distinctively hoosier.

This remains true in 2017. A few times a week, punk bands can be found performing in houses and D.I.Y. venues across town, such as The Bishop, Blockhouse, The Void, Rhino’s, and The Backdoor. Bloomington is home to a number of punk and indie labels: The Secretly Group, Winspear, Plan-it-x Records, and Let’s Pretend Records are a few. Bloomington’s Landlocked Music and TD’s CDs & LPs sell local punk music, which is broadcasted through Bloomington radio stations WIUX and WFHB. 

A thriving zine scene augments and documents the music. The volunteer-run Boxcar Books and Community Center boasts one of the most impressive commercial zine collections that I have ever encountered. Zines like Neurodivergence and Shut Up and Listen are produced and celebrated through youth zine-writing workshops and zinefests.

It should be clear at this point that the Bloomington punk scene is rad; that such an unassuming Midwestern town has such a deep history with punk music, and that the scene is still flourishing today shouldn’t be surprising. My goal for writing this column is to shed a light on the scene itself, and all of the humans that make it special.    [/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

ONLY NOISE: All The Rage

monster-children-henry-rollins-2

High school. The quivering minutes before debate class. Perspiring and wobbly at the thought of blurting my tenth-grade arguments to a room full of…seniors.

There was only one way to properly cull my nerves before a debate: get furious.

While anger might make some frantic and unhinged, it has long been a friend of mine. Though I may never have realized its cathartic, downright productive abilities had it not been for debate class – and the horror of public speaking as a high school kid.

“Make me mad!” I would goad my classmate, Kim, moments before the great Bloom v. Luker debate of 2006, regarding the legitimacy of the Iraq War (guess which position I took).

“How? What should I say?” my sweet classmate would ask, utterly baffled.

“Talk about what a wonderful president George W. Bush is. Say Evangelical Christian stuff – like how homosexuals are going to burn in hell.”

Kim didn’t become any less confused, but I won that damn debate. Most of the damn debates, for that matter. But had it not been for that little boost of fury, I’m not so sure I would have.

Long has anger been a stigmatized emotion – more so for women than men, unfortunately. What is an incensed woman to do when she is told for decades that 12 Angry Men look like passionate, dutiful citizens, but one angry woman looks like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction?

For the better part of my life, I’ve had an alchemic relationship with anger. What many saw as an unpleasant reaction, I viewed as a primal tool made for navigating the world differently. Getting amped up on adrenaline before debate class didn’t make me an irrational font of diatribe – it calmed me, gave me clarity, and the steadiness of a well-wielded scalpel. After discovering this effect, I naturally found a companion in angry music.

But what does “angry music” mean? I’m not exclusively implying topical music, like the Regan-era politico-punk of Dead Kennedys (though it is all the more relevant these days). What I find significantly more purgative is music that embodies wrath in sound alone – that weaves an aural tapestry of rage. The aggressive guitar symphonies of Glenn Branca’s The Ascension come to mind, as do the sparse yet sinister pieces from George Crumb’s Black Angels album. These records show emotion rather than speak of it, and while anger may not have been the impetus for behind them, it is how I appropriate the work.

Branca’s compositions in particular, especially when experienced live, create an all-consuming force field of sound that overwhelms in a similar way to being bathed in outrage. His incredibly loud, distorted and relentless cacophony of guitars verges on sounding stressful…but in a good way? And yet, after confronting that taxing sensation for a good hour: tranquility ensues.

For quite some time I figured that this off-brand “enlightened” reaction was solely an attribute of my own idiosyncrasies. Perhaps it was a fucked up feature of my being. I’m the person who considers The Exorcist to be one of the greatest movies of all time, after all. I was the kid who would watch tacky, History Channel documentaries on unsolved murders and serial killers after school. Maybe my relationship to anger and its musical spawn was messed up, even unhealthy.

But then, science rushed to my defense! In spring of 2015, Australia’s psychology school at the University of Queensland published a study entitled; “Extreme Metal Music and Anger Processing,” which countered the longstanding assumption that listening to “angry music” increases the listener’s level of anger. The researchers conducting the study found 39 “extreme music listeners aged 18-34,” who were “subjected to an anger induction, followed by random assignment to 10 min of listening to extreme music from their own playlist, or 10 min silence (control).”

The study found that “hostility, irritability, and stress increased during the anger induction, and decreased after the music or silence. Heart rate increased during the anger induction and was sustained (not increased) in the music condition, and decreased in the silence condition.”

The researchers concluded that “extreme” music does not in in fact stoke extreme behavior or delinquency in listeners. “Rather,” as their report claims, “it appeared to match their physiological arousal and result in an increase in positive emotions. Listening to extreme music may represent a healthy way of processing anger for these listeners.”

Finally, there was a demonstrable argument for my fascination with one of our most feared emotions. I no longer feel the need to explain to people why I am unlikely to bop around to the Go-Go’s when in a foul mood. It seems more fitting to thrash around to Merzbow, or Girl Band, or Throbbing Gristle.

I mention all of this, in part because I find it inherently interesting; my fascination with the link between music and mood isn’t going anywhere. But I also mention it in the hopes of arousing the reexamination and repurposing of a sentiment that is so prevalent today. Last week I spoke about how Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer feels that “Donald Trump is going to make punk rock great again,” which would be a function of channeling our collective fury into an art form – something that humans are pretty good at doing.

So as we get closer to inauguration day, and to the nationwide marches in resistance of it, I hope we can remember that anger isn’t always such a bad thing. I hope we can remember that when focused and sharpened like a fine, diamond point, our anger can split the awaiting air, and get us to our destination sooner. Despite what those in power would like to convince us of: anger does not mean violence, just like angry music does not mean delinquency.

Don’t be afraid of your own rage.

 

ONLY NOISE: Punk Rock, Patrimony, & Pyrotechnics

queen

Pardon me for mumbling. I simply haven’t released my *facepalm.*

In the past few months I’ve been following allegations that multimillionaire Joe Corré – spawn of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and late Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren – would set fire to roughly $6,000,000 worth of punk memorabilia. That’s right. Six. Million. Dollars worth. Or five million pounds worth, if you’re across the pond.

Corré’s pyro-maniacal threat was sparked in response to Punk London, an admittedly cheesy, year-long cultural celebration of punk’s history supported by the likes of former London mayor Boris Johnson, The Heritage Lottery Fund, and other emblems of – as Corré stated in an interview – “the establishment.” Whatever that means. (Does it mean white, multimillionaire males, perhaps?)

I wasn’t sure if Corré, who is also the founder of exorbitant lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, would follow through with the burning. It was doubtless a publicity stunt, but would the match be struck? Apparently so. While we were still trippin’ on tryptophan this past Saturday, Corré, who hired a PR firm promote the event, took to the River Thames with Westwood in tow and burned the artifacts on a boat; complete with flaming effigies of David Cameron, Theresa May, etc. Flames engulfed everything from rare Sex Pistols recordings, punk-era merchandise, and clothing that belonged to Corré’s famous parents. The date, November 26th, marked the 40th anniversary of the Sex Pistols single “Anarchy in the UK,” which is super hilarious because I imagine Corré must have had to get a permit to set fire to things on a boat in the fucking Thames river. Or maybe he just paid the relatively small fine of 5,000 pounds to get out of trouble. That must be chump-change for a man with millions of pounds to actually burn.

Joe Corre, the son of Vivienne Westwood and Sex Pistols creator Malcolm McLaren, burns his £5 million punk collection on a boat on the River Thames in London.

Corré’s actions and statements are all so conflicting, hypocritical and ironic, it is difficult to know where to begin untangling such a knot; almost as difficult as figuring out how to get the hell out of an Agent Provocateur “playsuit.”

Where do I begin?

The first problem with Corré’s “thesis” is one of timeliness. To say, as he told The Guardian, that “the establishment” has “privatised, packaged and castrated” punk, and that the movement has become a “McDonald’s brand … owned by the state, establishment and corporations,” is wildly funny to me. Because: no shit. Is it really news to anyone over the age of 12 that punk has been commodified like every other branch of subculture that has ever existed? Where was Corré with his torch in 1988 when the first Hot Topic was opened? Where was he in 1992, when mum Vivienne Westwood accepted her Damehood from The Queen of England, or again in 2006 when she accepted another such honor from the Prince of Wales? Corré has stated that one of his issues with the Punk London affair was its affiliation with the Queen, but I don’t see him setting fire to his mom’s $100 t-shirts over her affiliation.

Another problem is Corré’s warped notion that punk was ever anything philosophically aspirational to begin with. Politico-punk didn’t surface until long after punk was officially declared dead, long after the nihilistic first wave in the ‘70s petered out, which had nothing to do with providing answers for lost youth. And as someone who believed in the “ethos of punk” so much that I had an entire cigarette burned into my left wrist because I found it “symbolic” – that is still hard for me to say a decade later.

Punk is music, sprung from boredom and disenchantment with a previous era. It is a reaction, a notch in history’s belt that is perpetually replaced by the next one. Jerry Lee Lewis. Dylan. The Stooges. Wu-Tang Clan. Nirvana. They all disrupted a previous form, but no one ever wrote a manifesto. To think that punk ever existed in a vacuum safe from historical cause-and-effect is beyond naïve.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]

LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 26: Joe Corre, the son of Vivienne Westwood and Sex Pistols creator Malcolm McLaren (not in picture) burns his entire £5 million punk collection on November 26, 2016 in London, England. Joe Corre burnt the rare punk memorabilia in protest saying punk has no solutions for today's youth and is 'conning the young'. (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images)
Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images

The fact that Corré chose the 40th birthday of “Anarchy in the UK,” is doubly hilarious because he seems to forget that the Sex Pistols were a marketing tool…an entirely fabricated band – fabricated, by his dad.

Corré’s remark that punk is now a “McDonald’s brand” is undercut by the fact that the Sex Pistols were, from day one, a McLaren brand. The late manager and former owner of SEX – the clothing store that first began co-opting punk culture – was entirely divisive when putting together Rotten, Vicious, and co. In Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil’s famed punk oral history Please Kill Me, McLaren explains his motives for the Pistols:

“Richard Hell was a definite, hundred percent inspiration, and, in fact, I remember telling the Sex Pistols, ‘Write a song like ‘Blank Generation,’ but write your own bloody version,’ and their own version was ‘Pretty Vacant.’”

“I just thought Richard Hell was incredible. Again, I was sold another fashion victim’s idea.” “He was this wonderful, bored, drained, scarred, dirty guy with a torn T-shirt. I don’t think there was a safety pin there, though there may have been, but it was certainly a torn and ripped T-shirt. And this look, this image of this guy, this spiky hair, everything about it – there was no question that I’d take it back to London. By being inspired by it, I was going to imitate and transform it into something more English.”

Perhaps hypocrisy is all Corré knows, given the conflicted business legacies of his parents, both of whom have profited heavily on punk. Vivienne Westwood’s fashion empire is wholly at odds with her “activism.” I noticed this especially when I interned at her Battersea studio in the summer of 2013, straight out of college.

Interning is regrettably unavoidable in the fashion industry, and companies often depend on the free labor they exploit. This is certainly the case at Vivienne Westwood Gold Label, where unpaid interns trace and draft patterns, cut fabric, sew samples, run errands, create technical sketches, and perform numerous other invaluable jobs. I once made a tulle skirt as tall as me with something like 30 meters of fabric. It took about two weeks. The studio was littered with plastic buttons, which we sometimes had to make, emblazoned with slogans like “Climate Revolution” and “Global Warming;” the unsustainable material of the buttons themselves completely betraying such phrases.

Vivienne-Westwood-LFW-The-Joye-2

I wasn’t the only person to notice the hypocrisy of a high-end fashion brand hiding behind faux ethics. In 2013 a sustainable fashion publication called Eluxe Magazine, which claimed after one of Westwood’s fashion shows that:

“The sheer number of outfits (there were literally dozens of looks) and obviously petroleum-based materials shown on the runway seem to have already violated both her ‘cut out plastic whenever possible’ and ‘quality vs quantity’ points, proving that the Vivienne Westwood label is not eco-friendly.”

It has also been mentioned that despite Westwood constantly urging consumers to “buy less,” her company produces nine full fashion collections per year. The hypocrisy is rife.

But I digress. More infuriating than Corré’s blatant hypocrisy is his cynicism. His arrogance. His flagrant assholery.

To torch five million pounds worth of anything, even, say, toilet brushes, is an insult to all of those who cannot afford such pointless, teenage acts of “rebellion.” Corré’s actions reflect his superior economic status. It reminds me of one of my favorite fashion history facts:

Prior to the French Revolution, it was en vogue amongst high court and the aristocracy to powder one’s skin and hair to a shade of ghost white. We’ve all seen the rococo paintings, but do you know what they used as powder?

Flour. They used food, while hoards of peasants were starving to death. But what did Marie Antoinette care? She had plenty of cake. And Corré has plenty of money.

And he didn’t torch toilet brushes. He set fire to cultural artifacts – to patrimony. I feel like there was a group of people in the 1940s who used to burn items of artistic heritage, like, maybe books? I just can’t remember what they were called…

Outside of all of these issues, the saddest thing to me about Corré’s bonfire is he could have done something constructive with his inherited, entirely un-earned wealth. There have been numerous suggestions, including the request that he sell the lot and donate the proceeds to charity, to which Corré replied that “the job of the state is now taken up by the charity sector. We have charities where people are earning £250,000 a year to sit on the board, these things are becoming corporations in their own right.” What a convenient response.

My personal suggestion to the pompous Corré, the punk heir and lord of overpriced panties, would have been to donate the materials to a non-profit, anti-capitalist organization such as The Archive of Contemporary Music (ARC) in Tribeca. The ARC’s sole purpose is to preserve our audible culture, and all media related to it, for the sake of posterity and education. Highbrow, lowbrow – it is all worth preserving regardless, because its very existence teaches us about ourselves as creative beings.

But as destruction is the opposite of creation, perhaps Corré can’t wrap his head around that.

 

[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

INTERVIEW/EP REVIEW: The Black Black

the black black

Adjusted I by The Black Black is a fresh, edgy take on post-punk and garage rock. Guitar riffs snake and snarl over heavy bass, but the serious topics the EP explores are balanced out by dancey drums. Their three songs acknowledge the strangeness of existing and growing up in the modern age without being dragged down by it. The culmination of this sound is “Personal Pronoun,” the EP’s standout track.

“Thematically, it’s kind of a break-up song, a song about the replaceable nature of relationships,” the band’s singer/songwriter/guitarist, Jonathan, told us. “Sometimes, you’re replacing the relationship but not the person, and the people blur together.”

Adjusted I is out now. Read the rest of our interview with Jonathan and check out “Personal Pronoun” below.

AudioFemme: Let’s start with your band name. What inspired The Black Black?

Jonathan: It’s actually a name I thought of before I had the band. There were all these bands that used “black” as the first word of their name, and it was kind of a reaction to that. Like The Black Keys, or The Black Eyed Peas, or Black Rebel Motorcycle Club or The Black Eyes. I felt like it was used to make a band sound tough. So I was just like, “Oh, we’re the Black Black.”

It turned out to be a really bad name. It was a bad idea because there’s no words in it- there’s just “the” and “black” and “the” doesn’t count. In an internet age, you can’t search for it at all. I wouldn’t use it again. (laughs)

It definitely wasn’t hard to find you on Facebook, if that helps.

It’s better now, but for the first two years, it was impossible.

So, Adjusted I is a t-shirt!

Our EP is a t-shirt. I love saying that: Our record is a t-shirt.

How did that idea come about?

Our last record came out in 2014 and was on vinyl, and it just… it takes a lot of time to get vinyl. Pressing plants get backed up and it’s very expensive.  I have no interest in CD’s because I feel like CD’s are garbage- and often times you’re at shows and kids are like, “Oh I want to get something… but I don’t have a record player.” Well, I don’t want to sell them this record that they’re never going to play. That just wore on me awhile and we had the idea, we can put the record out sooner if we don’t do vinyl. It’s cheaper, it’s quicker, and everybody wears t-shirts. You’d buy a t-shirt for that price anyway, and you get a record too.

My favorite song was “Personal Pronoun.” Can you expound on its theme?

That’s actually my favorite song too…  Sonically, that song got the idea of what I wanted this band to sound like closer than any other song we’ve ever had. Thematically, it’s kind of a break-up song, a song about the replaceable nature of relationships. As you’re getting older, and had various numbers of different relationships, sometimes, you’re replacing the relationship but not the person, and the people blur together. And the whole thing can blur together as you get older. It’s not just one or two, it’s three or four. Or more.

Is your song “Territorial Trappings” a Nirvana reference?

It is a Nirvana reference; it’s a reference to “Territorial Pissings.” I guess the primary reason for that was there’s a line it that’s “You gotta figure it out, you found a better way.”  That’s a reference to the lyric  “Gotta find a way, gotta find a better way.” And thematically, the title just works for it. It’s about getting trapped by your surroundings.

Now Adjusted I is out, do you have any upcoming plans or projects?

We actually recorded two EPs at the same time, so there’s another that’s already finished called Adjusted II. That’s a sequel to this one, kind of. It’ll have similar themes and artwork.

ONLY NOISE: Pop Anonymous

The Smiths

Someone I used to date always said that I only hated everything that existed.  I fucking hated that guy, but he may have been on to something.  I’ve long been called many things; a contrarian, a hater, overly opinionated, and my personal favorite, too intense.  But while those assessments can ring true, they don’t take into account my aptitude for eating crow, a skill best exemplified in my musical flip-flopping over the years.  Lengthy is the list of bands I used to “hate” and now adore.  Changing your mind is a simultaneously painful and elating metamorphosis to endure.  Especially when it requires letting go of a pre-teen ethos deeply rooted in punk rock; a genre that is constantly evaluating it’s own badassness.  My leading question as a 14-year-old closet pop-addict being: does liking ABBA make me less punk rock?

Before my musical diet broadened exponentially, before I caught myself enjoying a Taylor Swift song here and there, or found out that I did in fact like hip hop, The Cardigans, and Kate Bush, I pretty much only listened to punk.  I wanted music with anger issues.  I was allergic to melody…or so I thought.  There was a specific regimen of sloppy, fast, and distorted a song had to abide by to catch my attention.  It was a closed mindedness I’m shocked anyone was able to put up with.  My mom would softly chide me as I furiously jabbed the radio tuner in search of something to appease my limited tastes, “variety is the spice of life, you know.”

And she was right!  But I couldn’t even see the variety so intrinsic to punk rock at first: jazz, ska, rockabilly, country…they all found homes in the tedious sub-genres of punk at some stage or another.  But at the time it had a narrow definition, and more importantly, existed in a vacuum.  Whenever my dad would try to relate to me by voicing observations such as: “hey, this is really just sped-up pop music!” I would defend its “hardcore” integrity with a spiny vengeance.

Pop was also burdened with a slim definition.  Pop meant flaccid and saccharine.  Pop was the noise that bubblegum made.  Pop was the opposite of punk, unless it was pop punk, a genre I absolutely indulged in but would go to painstaking lengths to rename as “skater punk” or “neo-punk” because semantics and titles meant that much to me.  I wonder why.

There were countless bands that I tossed aside in my one-woman-war against melody.  The Smiths were top of the heap.  Did I really hate The Smiths because I’d patiently, painfully sat through full albums and just couldn’t stand the irresistible brightness of Johnny Marr’s guitar, or Morrissey’s delicious voice?  Or did I stop my investigation  short of listening, scoff at the flowers in Moz’s pocket, and turn away the moment I realized that everyone else loved them?  As we know, pop is short for popular, and with discriminating ears I’d decided that “popular” was synonymous with “crap.”

It took me a long time to realize that hating something because of its popularity is just as lame as liking it for that reason.  Concept, I’ve learned, can be the enemy.  Those little placards next to the paintings at museums can never communicate what it is that the canvas does to you.  It may seem funny that a music critic is telling you to not listen to the ideas surrounding music, but before a critic I’m a listener, and one thing I  know is that diving in on your own, swimming around, feeling the temperature and the texture of a song…that’s all that really matters.  Gleaning significance from a concept-a synopsis really, no longer interests me…I want the meat of the thing.  And it was with this abandonment that I was finally able to enjoy a whole slew of music I would have shrugged off in my younger years.

If concept is the enemy, context is a friend.  After all, it was context that first tricked me into liking The Smiths.  I was on an ugly grey balcony in Seattle, the balcony belonging to a friend’s hip older brother.  It was the summer before I moved to New York and I found myself dating hip big brother’s college friend, a coy Brit who played with his bangs too much.

The brother, being a musician, had a hoard of instruments strewn about his apartment, along with plenty of friends who could play them.  What college apartment would be complete without the requisite acoustic guitar, after all?

Though I grew up in the midst of musicians and have been witness to my fair share of casual-setting sing-alongs, I’ve never taken a shine to them.  Too intimate.  Too showy.  Mostly too intimate.  This occasion was no different.

Some guy with a fashion mullet and a purple zip up hoodie started strumming away on a six-string, and though I already wanted to run far away, I remained board-stiff in my deck chair.  The song was requested by the Englishman, who shortly began to sing:

“stop me, uh-uh-oh stop me, stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before…”

My ears perked up-I hadn’t heard this one before.  I loved it.  I wanted to know who wrote it so I could hear the original version as soon as humanly possible and wash the sonic imprint of this “stripped-down” cover from my skull.

“Whose song is that?!”  I demanded.

The two men looked at each other with mild disgust that I didn’t already know.

“The Smiths,” replied a thin British accent.

Fuck.

It was the beginning of an ongoing love affair that peaked mid-college, at which point I effectively ruined The Smiths for my first New York boyfriend after playing their catalog too much.  I probably have friends who think I still hate The Smiths.  Don’t tell them.

My newfound love of the Salford four might suggest a wellspring of new interests on less aggressive terrain…say Belle and Sebastian, for instance.  Not so.  I found Stuart Murdoch’s voice too whispering, the music too soft, too…wussy.  For years I scoffed at the mention of them, never realizing that Murdoch’s lyrics were just as divisive as Morrissey’s, Elvis Costello’s, and Paddy McAloon’s.

But the battle against Belle and Sebastian would be lost to one song: “The Blues Are Still Blue” off of 2006’s The Life Pursuit.  I was studying in Milan and sharing a mini apartment with a friend from school.  The two of us were practically married, sharing a bedroom, class schedule, and groceries.  We would cook for each other and spend hours at our tiny kitchen table smoking poorly rolled cigarettes and finishing off bottles of three euros red.  Wine-stained and enthused, we would exit our circular debates about religion and politics, opting instead to play music we suspected the other hadn’t heard.  This was much easier for her, as she was Brazilian, and could pretty much stump me with anything other than Sergio Mendes or Os Mutantes.

And yet her greatest victory in this game was Belle and Sebastian, which took her months to secure.  “No.  I don’t like Belle and Sebastian.  I can’t stand Stuart Murdoch’s voice.”  I insisted.  “Ah, but you have to hear this song” she would counter.  It hit me like a kiss.  There was no denying it was a fantastic song; dripping in hooks, with a chorus you couldn’t stand not to sing.  I admitted after a few listens that it was pretty catchy, but just because I liked one song didn’t mean I liked the band as a whole.

Within weeks I was secretly listening to other songs off The Life Pursuit, then the entire album, and eventually, older Belle and Sebastian records.  Right before we graduated I conceded to my persuader.  “You did it,” I reluctantly grunted.  “You made me like Belle and Sebastian.  Are you happy now?”  She smiled with purple lips.  I still can’t get her into Nick Cave.  She doesn’t like music that is too angry.

 

ONLY NOISE: Falling in Love With Punk Rock Through Secondhand Smoke

You probably remember the years leading up to the nationwide smoking ban.  It was oddly enough Ireland-home of the dingy pub, that first did away with smoking sections in bars and restaurants.  Today it seems unspeakable that non-smokers and babies alike were once held captive in the local diner, forced to ingest a carcinogenic smog alongside their meal.  It is easy to look back on those days as less healthy time, an indulgent, old fashioned era, but I think of them only in a positive light.  Those were the years I discovered punk rock, live punk rock-surrounded by clouds of billowing nicotine no less.

In the early 2000’s, I didn’t smoke, but years before the ban took effect I’d manage to concoct a very romantic idea of cigarettes, one that I may shamefully still possess today.  I could perhaps attribute it to the particular sect of middle schoolers that piled in cars after class, filled up the largest booth Arlington’s Denny’s had to offer, and chain smoked while downing bottomless coffee.  They sat for hours, never ordered anything requiring a plate, and would most often leave without tipping, sometimes without paying at all.  They left ashtrays exploding with crinkled butts in their wake, and though I didn’t agree with their table manners I was transfixed by their tight black clothing, their angular haircuts, and the identical white skull they all seemed to sport on t-shirts and book bags.

These kids, punks though they were, remained oddly exclusive.  They held court at Denny’s, and were selective with their invitations.  Perhaps I was too young, or didn’t have the right outfit, or any cigarettes to spare.  But they had something I wanted, yet would never acquire from them-nor from Denny’s for that matter.  They had subculture, a community, a tribe.

The clan I lacked seemed as though it would never be found, at least not in Snohomish County.  But it was waiting for me at Graceland, now El Corazon, a smokey club just off of I-5 in downtown Seattle.  It had gone through many iterations as a nightspot in prior years-The Off Ramp, Sub-Zero and Au Go Go to name a few.  Those who saw the venue in its pre-Graceland days were witness to Pearl Jam’s earliest gigs, Nirvana’s first Seattle show, and numerous sets from the likes of Mudhoney and Soundgarden.

Though my time at Graceland didn’t boast the same historical gravitas, on a personal level it is a fixed point in memory; the nucleus of an entire period of musical education.  Mine wasn’t a lesson in grunge, but punk rock, and it began on Valentine’s Day in sixth grade.

Up to this point, my introduction to punk rock had been piecemeal and happenstance.  The older sibling model for cultural osmosis did not apply, because my only live-in sister was entrenched in the rave scene, which at 12 perplexed me.  I wouldn’t understand music sans guitars for years to come.

I’m not certain what it was that drew me to punk initially – maybe it was that naive idea kids have that we can actually achieve individuality by adhering to a subculture, by wearing the uniform and honoring the customs.  Or was it the rebellious allure of the Denny’s set?  Perhaps I just wanted to believe there was more to talk about than Pokemon and Beanie Babies.

More than anything I suspect it was the clutch of a gnawing preteen anger that made punk so attractive to me.  I felt at odds with my peers, simultaneously despising them and wanting their affection.  I therefore needed a mode of aggression, a manifesto to legitimize my ambivalent rage.  Punk seemed to be the only club accepting of such antisocial sentiments, a therapy that didn’t ask why you were furious, but simply handed you the boxing gloves.

Despite the driving emotions, my entree into punk music wasn’t as badass as I’d like you to believe.  There was Sum 41, and Greenday, and Blink 182, and Rancid.  The latter was casually recommended to me by Amy, the teenage shopgirl at my dad’s mercantile.  My long term love affair with Social Distortion also came about by chance.  My cousin’s then-boyfriend was getting rid of CDs by the boxful, and among those disks was the band’s 1998 release Live At The Roxy.

It was an album I played on repeat for months.  To this day I can’t put my finger on what it stoked in me.  By later comparison it is nothing revolutionary-a pretty mild, straightforward rock n’ roll record with a few f-bombs and a guitar solo backing every bridge.  Maybe your first favorite band is more about timing and convenience than it is choice-like your first crush at school.

Before Graceland I had been dipping my toes into punk; after I was fully submerged.  According to an archive page from punknews.org, 2.14.2002 was in fact the date of my first punk show, which was a compilation gig embarrassingly titled: Punks vs. Psychos.  The original bill was Tiger Army, Lars Frederiksen & The Bastards, Nekromantix, and the Distillers.  The idea being that half of the bill were punk bands, and half psychobilly, a sped-up version of rockabilly with horror film lyrics.

Having caught wind of my burgeoning musical interests, family friends Shannon and Steve rode in to the rescue: the Punks vs. Psychos gig was entirely their idea  It’s funny how the adults who have known you since infancy suddenly become shepherds of cool.  These guys had seen The Clash, been to England, and had a seemingly limitless supply of secondhand Doc Martens to gift me.   They even had a nephew, Keenan, who quickly became my accomplice in the search for anything punk as fuck in our sleepy cow town.  They were like punk rock fairy godparents.

It took over an hour to drive into Seattle.  The evening was particularly thrilling not only for the culture shock, but for the taboo: it was a school night.  Before door time, Shannon, Steve, Keenan and I made a pit stop at Dick’s Drive-In, an institution well known by Washingtonians.  Dick’s is a golden-era burger joint that’s been around since 1954-which is truly arcane for the West Coast.  They serve greasy fare impervious to requests of  customization.  No add this, no hold that.  It’s the opposite of Burger King.  Want it your way?  Fuck off.  Come to think of it, Dick’s is more punk rock than I ever realized.

Being a drive-in Dick’s had no place to sit, so we took our feast to the car, American Graffiti style.  We each devoured the divine trio of cheeseburger, french fries and milkshake.  Despite the sating meal I was wracked with nerves, expecting the kind of rejection I’d found at Denny’s-or worse.  As we pulled past Graceland to park the car I saw a slew of punks lined up alongside the venue’s exterior, which was painted a menacing combination of red and black.  All against the wall were ornate biker jackets overpopulated with shining silver spikes crowding the shoulders like barnacles on the hull of a ship.  Mohawks, Docs, torn jeans; the whole stereotypical bit.  Then of course there were the psychobilly kids: men with slicked-back ducktails and cuffed jeans, and chicks touting Rita Hayworth hair and red lipstick.  The aesthetic dissonance between the two clans made me feel like I was witnessing The Outsiders or West Side Story.

As we hitched ourselves to the end of the line I could feel curious stares from all around.  It was an all ages show, but it still must have been odd to see two 12-year-olds in attendance, and goofy looking ones at that.  My jeans were too baggy.  My leather jacket was all wrong, more bomber than biker.  And, in a sad attempt to get a pixie cut, I’d been left with a dense pompadour dyed “chocolate cherry” via Feria boxed color.  I’d heard it was dark inside, and I was looking forward to it.

Even better, the audience was shrouded in smoke, a welcomed invisibility cloak for me.  It was difficult to see anything in fact, given the atmospheric fog, but also because everyone was much older, much taller, and their hairdos added a decent four to six inches on top of that.  I’d never seen anything like it.  I thought punks-actual punks-had died out in the 80s, when they became two-dimensional villains in b-movies.

It wasn’t long before word got around the venue that half of the bands for the evening had cancelled.  The bill turned out to be near punk-less as both The Distillers and Lars Frederiksen & The Bastards had cancelled.  Local punk-ish band Mea Culpa had been tacked on last minute, but  what was supposed to be my first punk show ended up being my first psychobilly show, which I was excited about because I knew no one at school would know what the fuck that was.

A large portion of the set is blurry to me, perhaps because the air itself was blurred by all that smoke.  Or it could have been the impromptu bloody nose that was summoned by the dryness in the room (this was a great thing because all of the girls in the bathroom assumed I’d been punched).  But I sharply remember the moment Nekromantix took stage, all armed with instruments like I’d never seen.  Frontman Kim Nekroman’s upright bass was an enormous coffin crowned with a cross headstock.  I remember how menacing they seemed to me at the time, singing freely of murdering cheerleaders, necrophilia, and the underground muse to many artists, Bela Lugosi.

The very chord of their first song hurled the crowd into a fit.  The room began to churn in a circle  pit, fists flailing in every direction and girls and boys alike tumbling to the floor repeatedly.  In hindsight it’s all camp, but at the time it was equally thrilling and terrifying.  The seemingly pointless aggression intrigued me, and I knew in that moment there was no going back.

INTERVIEW: Happy Fangs

Happy Fangs photo

Anyone that’s been likened to Bikini Kills lights up our radar. The Bay Area-based scuzz rockers Happy Fangs consists of Rebecca Bortman, Michael Cobra (Mr.Cobra), and Jess Gowrie. A name of dichotomy, Happy Fangs recently released their debut LP, Capricorn to critical acclaim. It’s the sort of music that will have your body thrashing before your brain knows what’s going on, lighting the way with the bridges you burn. We spoke with Happy Fang about Tina Turner, lack of sleep, and penning songs inspired by Jeff Goldblum’s lazer bears.

Audiofemme: So how did you guys meet and form a band?

Happy Fangs (All): Rebecca & Mr. Cobra met while playing in San Francisco bands that had one thing in common—Room 13, a practice space in The Tenderloin in San Francisco. We started out as a two piece with a drum machine but soon realized we wanted a live drummer to help kick up the energy. We searched so far, we ended up all the way out in Sacramento where we found Jess Gowrie, the best drummer in the world.

AF: Where does the name Happy Fangs derive from?

HF: When you have a bandmate with the legal last name of Cobra, you’ve gotta have a ferocious band name. When you have a bandmate as giddy as Rebecca, sometimes the band names itself. Jess joined after the band was named but she is truly the perfect third fang.

AF: Where is your favorite hometown venue to perform in?

HF: We just played we just play Great American Music Hall as the hometown show on this tour. Imagine playing in a Great-Gatsby-style 1920s venue with all the grandeur, gold, and velvet that you’d expect! Mr. Cobra was warming up on guitar before our set only to look over to see a picture of Robert Plant warming up on his guitar in the same spot. It’s so awesome to play at a venue that’s had so many amazing musicians grace the stage!

AF: How does the city of San Francisco influence your sound?

HF: We are actually a duel city band. Jess lives in Sacramento. That being said I think the urban environments that all three of us choose to live in contributes greatly to the pace and drive of our music.

AF: You’re currently on tour – What do you miss most from home while traveling?

HF: Sleep! What is that again?

AF: Can we expect to catch you on the East Coast anytime soon?

HF: Plans are in the works!

AF: Who were your musical icons?

Rebecca: Tina Turner has influenced me before I only understood that singing was different than talking. Her moves & her glamour & that incredible stage presence!

Mr. Cobra: Mine are an amalgamation of King Buzzo, Pepper Keenan, and Ian MacKay.

Jess: I’ve been called many names: Phyllis Collins, Joanna Bonham, Donna Henley. Singing drummers aren’t easy to find!

AF: If you could have anyone join you on stage – who would it be?

HF: David Bowie, Beth Gibbons from Portishead, and Jesse Keeler of Death from Above 1979 could join us on stage anytime.

AF: You’ve been called the next coming of Bikini Kill, are you fans, and how does the comparison make you feel?

HF: We’ve started covering Rebel Girl at our live shows and I’m not going to lie to you: all the girls are upfront! Come see us live and see for yourself!

AF: How would you as a group describe your sound?

HF: Hard on the outside, soft in the center, BYOearplugs.

AF: The visuals of your performances have often been noticed – can you tell me a little bit about that?

HF: We take the duality of our name to heart. You will never find color on stage with us. Everything on stage is black-and-white. If you take a picture of us at one of our shows there is no mistaking that it’s Happy Fangs. You will always find us warpainted at the start of our set and most of it sweat off by the end.

AF: What was the inspiration behind the first album?

HF: We are all three continually inspired by each other. We are also all three Capricorn seagoats–stubborn and persistent. We were gung ho on finishing this album and releasing it to the world as soon as possible, and January 27 was that perfect time at right after the Capricorn cycle!

AF: I read that you create a new song based on the audience’s suggestions at each performance. What’s the wildest suggestion you’ve gotten?

HF: Jeff Goldblum’s lazer bears!

Thanks, Happy Fangs! Steam Capricorn below.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][fusion_soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/73410018″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

TRACK REVIEW: Flashlights’ “Failure”

1393888009flashlightsHR25

Florida punk rockers Flashlights have just released their new track, “Failure,” in anticipation of their upcoming album Bummer Summer, due out in late spring via Hard Rock Records. Singer/guitarist Terry Caudill’s emotional vocals bring Taking Back Sunday’s Adam Lazzara to mind as he rasps, “Don’t you want to stay? Was it something I did?” The track is reminiscent of early emo but Flashlights infuses it with a soft guitar reverb that makes this track a perfect summertime anthem.

Bummer Summer was produced by Scott Hutchison and Andy Monaghan of Frightened Rabbit and will be Flashlights’ second full-length release, following their 2011 debut I’m Not Alone. The foursome will be at SXSW, playing with fitting peers like The So So Glos and Diarrhea Planet, and later going on a US tour with Miniature Tigers. Listen to “Failure” below!

LIVE REVIEW: Skaters @ Bowery Ballroom

IMG_0958

Skaters have spent the last year building up a dedicated fan base who have been practically salivating in anticipation of the band’s debut full-length, Manhattan, so it was about time for this album release show to come around. The Bowery Ballroom slowly filled up with girls all clad in Skaters’ merchandise, leaning patiently on the edges of the stage in anticipation of the main act.

But first up were femmes fatales, Bad Girlfriend, who appeared on stage giggling casually. The foursome’s cool and sweet demeanors put Skaters in danger of not being the heartthrobs of the night. Their sound held a lot of surfy guitar licks and captivating hooks, and the vocals—alternating between deep, Nico-esque tones and more high-pitched, sugary ones—reinforced their ’60s femme image. They were a good choice for opener, acting as foils to the main show by oozing girly, west coast cool.

The So So Glos were on next, their entrance accompanied by the Wu Tang Clan’s “Bring Da Ruckus”—an ideal choice. They said a simple hello with “Yo, it’s good to be in the city,” and dove right into their raucous set. The Bowery Ballroom’s acoustics lent themselves perfectly to lead singer Alex Levine’s raking vocals, and the band’s general attitude on stage reeked of classic rock ‘n roll. They were absolutely thrashing, conjuring images of The Clash shows-that-once-were, and it seemed the crowd simply couldn’t keep up with their raw energy. “We’ve been all around the world preaching about how New York dances so much,” commented Levine at one point, “…we were just lying.” But within a couple of songs, and particularly when the band broke out the song “Black and Blue” from their eponymous 2013 album, onlookers became moshers. They certainly did an admirable job of warming up the audience.

By the time Skaters appeared on stage (they came on to the Ghostbusters’ theme song, obviously), the room was packed with the band’s supporters and friends. The crowd was strictly Manhattanite—a perfect setting for the album being celebrated—and the atmosphere was comfortable and intimate. The band opened with “Symptomatic,” the seventh track off their new record, and this time the crowd didn’t need to be coaxed into dancing.

About halfway through the set, the quintet broke into their popular single, “I Wanna Dance (But I Don’t Know How),” which was clearly the crowd favorite and instantly recognizable from its raunchy bassline. Skaters played at their leisure, even wishing a friend in the front row a happy birthday at one point, proving that the night was truly a family affair. Another highlight of the show was the band’s fairly true to form rendition of The Smiths’ “This Charming Man,” which was dedicated to another friend in the audience.

It was the best possible way to celebrate Skaters’ highly anticipated debut—a night as energetic and quintessentially New York City as the album itself.