Tag: punk

When Push Comes to Shove: Etiquette in the Mosh Pit

The live music experience is a major part of music fandom, and anyone who attends concerts regularly can attest that there’s an unspoken sense in the air of how to behave and interact with one another at most shows. In venues of any size, hosting any band, of any genre, there is simple etiquette that one makes a contract to uphold as soon as they enter the venue’s doors. Sometimes though, for whatever reason, folks in the audience just don’t get the message, ignoring body language, personal space, and common decency, which can make for an unpleasant experience for everyone around. Here, we lay out the do’s and don’ts of show-going, explicitly stating that unspoken language once and for all.

Photo by Sarah Knoll

First, let’s go through some of the people you may encounter at shows. This does not go for all shows or all genres, but as a photographer and writer who covers live music often, I’ve become familiar with certain types of folks I often share space with. It’s important to identify these people so you know how to deal with them at your next show.

Photo by Sarah Knoll

Here With Friends

This person is typically just along for the ride, more than likely traveling in a pack and sticking with them through the entirety of the show. These people are generally harmless – just be on the lookout if they start to hype each other up a bit too much throughout the band’s set. But even that is better than a big clump of people only there to shmooze, who talk throughout the show about things unrelated to music – especially if the set is quiet. Though they may not talk to anybody else in the crowd, random conversations can be distracting; if it seems like this is going to be the case, seek refuge away from the group.

Die-Hard Fan

If the show is at a larger venue or is a really noted act, you might get those die-hard fans who will go early and wait in long lines to see their favorite band from a prime position. They will be at the front of the stage, screaming every lyric of every song, their unconditional love for whatever act they’re seeing undoubtedly noted by the freshly-purchased merchandise they’re wearing or some attempt to drop random facts about the act between songs. They may get wild, but it’s all for love of the music – generally you can count on this person to promote positive vibes in the folks around them, whether they’re alone or with a friend.

Wacky Flailing Arm Inflatable Tube Man

You will probably see this person in the middle of the venue, as they are often a part of the pit – maybe even the pit starter. Common at hardcore, punk, and even certain types of hip-hop shows, they flail their arms and legs all over the place to build a circle around them and are not to be reckoned or reasoned with. If they’re getting a pit started that you don’t want to be involved in, try and stay safe while giving them space to do their thing. It’s a little more awkward when someone’s just flailing for no apparent reason, but oftentimes these are the people who will be most offended when confronted, so subtle glaring or switching up your spot is all you can really do.

IPA Dude

Outside of shows, you’ll see this person at bars, at coffee shops, at Whole Foods, or walking across the street with their fixed-gear bike. They hold on to their beer like it’s their lifeline and probably won’t stray far from the bar of the venue so they’re able to order again quickly. If they’re not already friends with the bartender, they will be by night’s end, and will hopefully remain chill even if they have one or two too many. They might be very vocal with their opinions on beer, coffee, or even the music, but they can be cool to hang around with if you just want to enjoy your time by the bar, removed from the crowd.

Arms on Lockdown

Similar to IPA Dude, this person is very chill. Usually coming by themselves, they keep their arms and legs to themselves and inside of the ride at all times. They’re just there to enjoy the music, and not be bothered. Just like a bee, if you leave them alone, they’ll be harmless, but it’s likely they take things very seriously – seriously enough that if they’re standing next to Wacky Flailing Arm Inflatable Tube Man or a group of loud talkers there might be a showdown.

Surf’s Up!

We all know those who crowd surf. It is a sport and a gift to those who are comfortable enough to be lifted up by complete strangers and passed along sweaty palms to prove their love and joy of the band. Sometimes they barrel to the front to jump off the stage and into the crowd; other times, they’ll get bystanders to hoist them up and surf toward the stage. They may not appear so before the opening song, but those first few riffs transform them into a thrill-seeker. Once they’re up, it’s hard for them to control where they go or what they’re doing with their own limbs, so if you’re anywhere in their path, stay alert! Doc Martens to the forehead do not feel good.

The Photographer

As a photographer myself, I’ll say this: even though some of us are working, we are just fanatical as anyone else. We typically love the bands we shoot, we love the thrill of a live act, and we love to document that. We have to be near the stage to get good shots, and with that comes some risks. We dodge crowd surfers, flailing arm people, pit-pushers, and more, often with expensive equipment that we’d prefer not to break. A good photographer shouldn’t distract you from the main act – most will get in and get out once they’ve got what they need. If you’re near an amateur with an iPhone who sees a need to record video of every song in its entirety, that’s another story – politely remind them that they’re blocking your view when they do that and ask them to keep documenting the event to a minimum, and hope that they’ll oblige.

Push Pops

At some shows, there may the tamer cousin to the mosh pit – the push pit. The push pit mostly contains people jumping up and down and having a good time. It is a uniform mass and is easy to get in and out of. Those who decide to be a part of this mass are usually not aggressive, but have a gigantic love and appreciation for the band, and let that excitement show with high-energy movements. Joining in can be really fun, and it’s great cardio too!

Photo by Sarah Knoll

Needless to say, a crowd encompasses many types of people, and works almost like its own organism, reacting to the same stimuli. No matter what type describes your own show-going persona, there is some behavioral protocol that should be followed when attending a show. We all want to enjoy the experience, get our money’s worth, and leave happy. But one or two unpleasant folks can sour the mood for everyone, instead bringing negativity and sometimes even danger to the audience around them. Here are some best practices to be conscious of when you’re at a show.

Most importantly: R-E-S-P-E-C-T isn’t just a song by Aretha Franklin (RIP), it’s something that everyone in general life should exhibit, both spoken and silent. In the close quarters of a sold-out venue, this goes double, and the easiest way to tell if a given behavior is acceptable is to look around you. Observe the crowd – if no one’s dancing or moving around at all, it’s probably not an appropriate time to start up a pit and start pushing people around. Though it seems like common sense, unfortunately, some people are lacking of that.

Respect also comes in the form of respecting physical boundaries. Although sometimes show-goers are packed like sardines into a venue, it does not mean that someone should be touched without permission and personal space should always be 100% respected, as best you can. Even a tap on the shoulder can make someone feel uncomfortable, and shoving people aside to get a spot in front of the band is pretty rude. If someone’s in the pit it’s probably safe to say they’re open to the types of touching that come along with that, but – especially for people in the pit periphery who aren’t active participants, keep your hands to yourself.

Photo by Sarah Knoll

The pit can be an amazing experience to be a part of, but it’s also a complicated one. Unfortunately, the pit is heavily dependent on social cues, therefore communication can be misinterpreted. For the most part, even folks who appear aggressive want everyone to have a good time too, and there’s a good deal of helping people up when they fall or doing some protective pushing around smaller moshers.

If you do not want to participate in jumping around, possible pushing, fist-pumping or any of that action, it is recommended that you find a small space where you will not be affected by said pit. Standing along the wall or in corners is a great option as these provide pockets of space where the pit will more than likely not open up, yet you’re able to see the action both on stage and off. If someone keeps pushing you or trying to throw you into the pit from the sides, feel free to tell them to back off, but don’t act hostile about it since you don’t want to start beef with someone who can put you in harm’s way.  If you’re not dying to see the act up and close, going to the back of the venue can put you in the arms of safety. It allows you to be close to the exits and possibly the bar, so you don’t have to interact with the pit people at all.

Photo by Sarah Knoll

If you’re going into the pit, don’t do anything more aggressive than you’d want done to you. If you don’t want to get punched, don’t punch people. It’s as simple as that. It’s sad that this has to be said, but countless times, people have been more aggressive than they need to be. If you’re in a pit and other people are knocking into each other and pushing around, cool. But if people are starting to grab one another by their shirts, push people down to the ground or grab anyone to the point where that person is out of control, don’t hesitate to notify someone. A lot of shows at bigger venues have competent security. Some bands have even been known to call out bad behavior they see in the audience. But whether it’s happening to you or someone nearby, don’t just do nothing. The more aware that people are about a potentially violent or offensive person, the safer that environment can be.

Photo by Sarah Knoll

Be observant of the venue around you, too. Be aware that the space needed for a pit can push other people into uncomfortable nooks and crannies. Assess your space before you decide to flail your arms everywhere or bring the pit further into the back or sides of the venue. Sometimes it’s appropriate and other times it’s not.

The pit can be a unique and fun experience if people can observe behavior and assess before they act. It takes at most five seconds to turn around and look at the people to your left and right and anticipate their next move. You’d do the same if you’re about to turn a corner on a street, so bring those same principles to a show.

Be a Conscious Observer. 

Safety should always be your main concern, even if that doesn’t seem “cool.” Observe and assess your surroundings; with violent events at concerts on the rise, it’s important to know where to go in case of emergency. Also, don’t be afraid to say hello to whoever is nearby you, and make sure they are aware of your presence. Whether offering a simple wave or friendly eye contact, noting your neighbors may help you in the long run if something were to happen, and even if nothing does, you might make a new friend.

It’s also important to note other people’s behaviors. Pit or no pit, some people may act in an unruly or uncomfortable way that can not only effect yourself, but other people in the crowd. Don’t be afraid to speak up if someone is making you or another person uncomfortable. Talk to the bartender, security, someone next to you, the box office attendant, even the band. Try to prevent a person from doing something potentially threatening and dangerous without direct conflict.

Photo by Sarah Knoll

Don’t Be An Asshole.

Pit ettiquette boils down to that one simple phrase. If you wouldn’t want it done to yourself, don’t do it. It’s very easy to be nice, but’s also easy to cross that line when you’re in the midst of your favorite song.

Courtesy extends to the bands providing the music; unless they have asked for requests, don’t heckle them with suggestions for their set list. Bands put time and thought into crafting their set list and try to get a good range of music played to make their audience happy. Sorry if that one obscure song from their very first album wasn’t played – ask yourself if you really wanted to hear it, or if you’re just posturing for those around you so that they know what a longtime fan you’ve been (FYI: no one cares, and true fans come to hear what the band is interested in playing). At the end of the day, though the band is hopefully grateful to have an audience to play for, it’s also an opportunity to play what they’re excited to play, and recycling the same old tunes can get boring on a long tour. Just because you paid money to see them perform does not give you the right to dictate how and what they should play.

Here’s an important one, if you are tall. Please. Let. Short. People. FORWARD. If you’re plagued with the short gene like I am (I’m 5’1”) then it can become difficult to see the band through a sliver of space between two people who are much taller than you, and no one wants to stare at someone’s shoulders and neck all night.

Photo by Sarah Knoll

Bottom line: show-goers want to get the most out of the shows that they go to, and the bands that play want to see their audience have fun. If “fun” entails pushing people around in a mosh pit all night for some, and standing by the bar with arms crossed for others, remember: there’s room for all types of fandom, but all are governed by a golden rule. It’s easy to be nice, so why not do it? You’re there for the music, sure – but also for the experience of being in the midst of a living, breathing crowd, so taking it all in and putting out positivity in turn is the best way to make sure everyone has a blast.

REVIEW: How to Be a Rock Critic

All Lester Bangs wants to do is listen to his favorite record: Van Morrison’s 1968 masterpiece, Astral Weeks. If only he could find his copy. It’s got to be around here somewhere, beneath the splayed magazines, take-out containers, and just a few thousand other LPs. Such is the inciting dilemma of Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s one-man play How to Be a Rock Critic.

I couldn’t resist the irony of a dead white guy telling me how to do my job, so I got a ticket immediately. How to Be a Rock Critic is not a pedantic or instructional title, however, but one referring to an early Bangs article first published in a small-circulation college zine. The one-act play – starring Jensen as the ill fated and infamous music journalist – is largely concerned with its subject’s gospel. Its full title reads: How to Be a Rock Critic: Based on the Writings of Lester Bangs.

Part of what drew me to the play was sick intrigue; I was positive it would be a shit show, or reductive and formulaic at the very least. And I have my reasons. Historically the portrayal of rock ‘n’ roll via visual narrative has not gone so well. Flicks like The Runaways and What We Do Is Secret (about LA punks the Germs) fell prey to laughable clichés and fabricated idealism, imbuing their main characters with far more nobility than the real people deserved. These biopics are the inverse of books like We Got the Neutron Bomb, which was unmerciful in its portrayal of rock ‘n’ rollers. There was no glamour or honor when Bob Biggs of Slash Records said of the Germs frontman, “I once saw Darby shoot up with gutter water!”

If there is one thing worse than the fictionalized depiction of rock stars, it is the fictionalized depiction of writers. Whether it’s Javier Bardem’s anguished “poet” in Mother! or Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway in Baz Luhrmann’s extended disco-remix of The Great Gatsby, the characterization of writers is often bloated with grandeur. Given that Lester Bangs was a stalwart of both rock and writing (not to mention bloated grandeur), I wasn’t sure if How to Be a Rock Critic could escape a trite fate.

A living room awaits at the Public Theater’s Martinson Hall on Saturday. It is littered with pages and beer cans and yes, stacks of records like angular layer cakes. If I didn’t know any better I would write this off as a stereotype, only it looks exactly like my friend’s apartment, and that friend is in fact a writer. It also looks exactly how my apartment would look if I had the freedom to live alone and be the slob I truly am. So they got me there.

The play begins with a grunt. Offstage bathroom noises collect our attention and soon enough Lester Bangs is before us. “Oh, fuck,” he says, before asking us to wait in his hallway for just, like, 20 more minutes while he finishes “this review.” “Ok… ” He stalls, “What about 15 more minutes?” To appease us he doles out magazines from a milk crate, and chucks cans of beer to a lucky few. In this little preamble, one thing is quickly established: Jensen-as-Bangs is one charming motherfucker.

Bangs entertains us briefly, rattling off motor-mouthed nonsense and informing us that he’s been up for 32 hours straight. He’d love to stay and chat, but he’s gotta “finish this review.” Stumbling over landmines of albums, he urges us to talk amongst ourselves. He reaches his desk, yanks an old page from his Smith Corona typewriter, and does exactly what you think he’s going to do with it.

I would like to see one portrayal of a writer, just one, that does not involve a sheet of paper being crumpled up into a ball and hurled across the room. Piss on it, eat it – set it aflame on your stove for god sakes – just please don’t crunch it into an angry little ball and toss it behind your back. When a new sheet is rolled into the machine Bangs stalls. He huffs, and puffs, and bangs on the keys. When the words still won’t materialize, he concedes. “Fuck it… let’s listen to some records!”

Within its first ten minutes, How to Be a Rock Critic erects two totems of Lester Bangs that will duel for the rest of the play. The first being Bangs as critic, fan, and fanatic. The second: Lester Bangs, tortured writer. I’m a fan of the former guy. Jensen’s ability to distill Bangs’ impassioned and vast catalogue of music criticism is admirable. His monologues are delivered with the same dizzying wit and lightning-speed stream of consciousness that Bangs was known for, and the amount of writing Jensen has synthesized is downright impressive.

Blank and Jensen spent years getting in touch with the Bangs archive, reading, researching, and turning thousands of pages of print into a play. Their success in shaping Bangs’ voice for the stage might have something to do with the duo’s background in acclaimed documentary plays like The Exonerated, which grew from firsthand interviews with over 40 released death row inmates. What shines in How to Be a Rock Critic are the long-winded, multi-syllabic manifestos on music, rock stars, critics, James Taylor (who Bangs so famously wrote should be “Marked for Death,”) childhood, girls, fandom, and of course, Van Morrison.

Bangs’ hunt for Astral Weeks punctuates the entire play, acting as the hub connecting countless spokes of praise and diatribe. It is the talisman he needs to justify his claims about art, and if he could only “just find this record, [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”][he] could show you!” When Bangs is talking about music, you believe his every word. There’s a contagious excitement Jensen conveys while putting on records and churning out rants, the same excitement Bangs was known to infect people with. The little details in Jensen’s performance, like cueing up a Carpenters album and slightly gesturing toward his favorite part of the song with raised fingers, are nuanced and spot-on.

Like Bangs himself, the play is charismatic, funny, and absurd, but at times deeply flawed. It is well known that Bangs died of an accidental pill and NyQuill overdose at age 33. His party animal habits and taste for drugs were as famous as his hatred for Led Zeppelin. This dark side of Lester – that “tortured writer” side – surfaces in my least favorite parts of the play. It’s not that I mind darkness, but Jensen’s rendering of Bangs-as-cough syrup philosopher can feel degrading at times. His sermons on writing feel like they were written by a writer, and not necessarily in a good way. I was reminded of Jeffrey Sweet’s introduction to his book, What Playwrights Talk About When They Talk About Writing, at one point. Namely that, “Playwrights don’t talk about writing with each other much.” Elvis Costello is often credited as saying, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” I say writers writing monologues about writers talking about writing is like a man self-addressing his dick pics.

There is also the issue of pandering. Several times throughout How to Be a Rock Critic, Jensen begins a sentence, only to trail off expectantly so the crowd can fill in the blank for him and pat themselves on the back. It’s a gross little episode of rock ‘n’ roll trivial pursuit that probably pissed off me and me alone, because I’m a critic (and nobody likes a critic). I cringed when Jensen began a story about “a club called???” And the audience dutifully answered in unison, “CBGB!!!” “That’s right! CBGB!” he said with the intonation of a children’s show host. Little things like this, of course, do not amount to a bad play. Nor do Jensen’s depiction of Lester’s tantrums, or scraps of monologue that grated my skin with their commoditized dissent. These are matters of taste.

In a final, half-hearted attempt at finding Astral Weeks, Lester Bangs fishes the LP out of another record’s sleeve. He’s on the floor. After gabbing for 80 minutes straight – pausing only to guzzle beer and two bottles of cough syrup – he toppled over and landed in a pile of 12”s. We’ve heard about his overbearing mother, he’s lamented the death of his father, and he’s reduced Elvis Presley to two identities: “Force of nature… and turd.”

Bangs strolls over to his turntable with the rescued wax and cues up “Cyprus Avenue.” At long last, we can understand what all the fuss is about. For me, it’s easy to understand. By a sheer stab of coincidence, Astral Weeks is one of my favorite records, too. There was a period of time during which I listened to it at least once a day, and it would certainly be in my luggage en route to a desert island.

In these final moments, Jensen and Blank (and I suppose Van Morrison) have nailed the spirit of Lester Bangs, and all the things he sought in music. But what was that? In 1980, Lester Bangs sat for an interview with his pal Sue Mathews, who asked him, “Are you aware of changes in the sorts of things that you look for as a critic? Or in the way that you listen to music?” “Hmm,” he said, “that’s a good question. Basically all I look for is passion, and I don’t care what form it comes in.”

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PLAYING COLUMBUS: Absinthe Father on Making DIY Spaces Safer

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Haley Butters of Absinthe Father doesn’t stop at making music – they also advocate for safer, more inclusive DIY spaces. All photos by Kaiya Gordon.

Haley Butters of Absinthe Father has been running DIY spaces since they were 16. “It was really time consuming,” they admit, “and probably not the smartest thing for me to be doing at sixteen, but it really shaped me as a person.” Now, Butters continues to be invested in the transformative possibilities of DIY spaces. “I’m trying to make sure that people don’t go down the path I went down when I was a kid,” they say, “but [/fusion_builder_column][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”][that they] still have access to music.”

Butters is about as multi-disciplinary as it gets, though they’re reticent about their own talents. They’re thoughtful, funny, and clearly well versed in both accessibility strategies and music making. “A habit I have,” they explain, is that “I think about what I want to say, and then I go through every single possible way it could be interpreted, and I try to make sure it comes across as clearly and as intentionally as possible.” They’re scrappy, too–when they tell me about their production process, I’m surprised to learn how much of their DIY music they truly do themselves. And as we talk in a Columbus café, the snow mellowing into slush outside the windows, I’m happy to settle into a conversation which expands beyond their own musical output to include questions we both have about ethics and intentionality, and what it takes to make a safe space safer.

2018 is off to a good start for Butters. Along with their January 1st release, SP/IT – a split EP between Absinthe Father and Ness Lake, the band for which Butters plays bass – they started recording a new six-song EP, played shows in both Pittsburgh and Yellow Springs, and, after advocating for a friend abused by Ian Graham of Cheap Girls, got blocked by Jeff Rosenstock on Twitter (Haley and their friend have attempted, since last summer, to have Rosenstock withdraw his support of Cheap Girls; he released the now-defunct band’s first two LPs via his Quote Unquote imprint before accusations came to light but has not made a statement on his relationship to them in the aftermath of the accusations against Graham). “It was sick,” they tell me. “Two days into 2018 – blocked!”

On SP/IT, Butters’ work as Absinthe Father is dreamy and expansive; their voice sinking into guitar sounds which vary from airy to biting, inviting to cosmic. But when I ask Butters how they achieved the mix on the EP, they laugh. “This is gonna reveal all my trade secrets,” they tell me. “I open garage band, put it like ten yards away from me, press record, run to my bed, and I just play straight through.”

In truth, this is an over-simplified version of Butters’ method, which is more purposeful than they initially admit. Though they don’t put their music through post-production, Butters curates their sound with guitar pedals, in addition to manipulating sound and tone with distance and volume. On the split, they opted for three different recording techniques, highlighting, they tell me, that “you can make music, record music, and be successful (whatever that means) no matter what level you’re at, [and] no matter what equipment you’re using.”

“Absence,” the first song on the EP, was recorded with the method described above. For the second track (“a little nervous energy is perfectly normal and nothing to freak out about haley”) however, Butters changed their approach. “I have a little i-rig, which is a quarter-inch adapter,” they explain, “and then a little dongle that [I] put in [my] iPhone. So I played the guitar through that into garage band, and then I played that recording out loud and sang [live] to record my vocals.” Lastly, “Marco’s Song,” a Ness Lake cover, was recorded professionally at Daily Grind in Columbus. But, says Butters, the EP “shows you don’t have to make the fancy equipment, because I like ‘Absence’ more than anything, and it’s the least done-up one.”

When Butters talks about the split EP, it’s clear how much they admire their peers in Ness Lake. “[Chandler and I] push each other a lot to create things every day. I’ll give him a challenge – like, write a song about your cat,” Butters laughs. They continue: “He doesn’t actually have a cat. He has like, a tarantula. It’s named Rodeo.” And Butters’ support of their peers expands beyond the tarantula, and beyond their friends in Ness Lake: they gush about their roommates in Columbus duo Queer Kevin, and when I ask about bands they’re excited about, they nearly squeal. “Oh god,” they tell me, “this is where I can go off.”

This investment is a testament not only to the way Butters approaches collaboration, but to their position in the music community as a whole. These days, they balance recording, touring, and managing with running Middle Earth, one of Columbus’ only all ages spaces. “I’m super into getting queer youth involved in scenes really early, because we don’t make things very accessible to people who are younger,” they tell me. But still, they say, “I wish I could do more. I’m not doing as much as I can, especially when it comes to people of color – in our scene, they’re virtually non-existent. To be the only one – and I pass as white – that’s not enough.”

In Columbus, Butters has seen a lack of attention to safety within music spaces. At the last hardcore show they went to, they tell me, they were kicked in the head and projectile vomited. Nobody came to help. To them, that level of carelessness is unacceptable. “When it comes to the way I run my space,” they say, “I want to make sure that the first thing I say is: ‘Hey, my name is Haley. I use they/them pronouns – come introduce yourself to me.’ That way people know they can feel comfortable talking to me.” If guests can’t donate money for artists, Butters gets them involved by putting them to work: telling people where the bathroom is, checking in to make sure that everyone feels safe, or completing smaller jobs, like recycling – all of the “little teeny things that people don’t think about,” they say. Butters has other tricks to make their shows more accessible too: providing time between sets for the audience to go outside and take a break, and handing out ear plugs. “I know it used to be punk to not wear earplugs,” they say, but “2018: it’s the year of the earplug.”

Butters also has strategies for intercepting “rambunctious” guests. “You can’t let that slide out of fear from [that person] lashing out,” they say. “You just have to nip it in the bud and make sure that everyone around them is ok – but also, that that person is ok.” They continue, laughing: “Assholes are still people.”

Despite this attention to detail, Butters is aware that not everybody feels comfortable at DIY shows. “I can do my best to put together a diverse bill,” they say, “and still, there will be almost all white people there. Inclusion is only half of the problem. I think that finding out why POC don’t feel safe, [and] what we can do to improve – [things] like that that people don’t think about.”

“We all just need to do better,” Butters tells me. “I don’t know the answers. I know the problems, but I don’t know the solutions. I wish I did.” One way Butters is striving to do better is by joining friends in organizing a nationwide group of non-men interested in developing better ways to curate safe and accessible spaces. “We’re saying do-it-together, instead of do-it-yourself,” they say. Another is by continuing to book bands that might not be highlighted in other settings: groups made up of trans and queer folks, POC, and people harmed by misogyny. Still, Butters notes, they can’t do it all alone. They know that often, a band will choose to book with other promoters – even if they know about Butters’ work.

“I understand, completely, wanting to make money,” they tell me. “I think that musicians should be paid. I understand wanting to have a good turn-out, and a good show.” But, they continue, “assuming that a white dude is going to curate that better than a non-man is not only fucked up, it’s wrong. If you are an artist, and you give [a] white dude your resources – your social capital, your time, and the opportunity to curate a bill, and book a space, and learn those skills – they just move up.” Butters sighs. “It’s so incredibly performative,” they say. “Everyone wants to support non-men. Everyone wants to support people of color… until it’s time to actually do it.”

While DIY scenes can be a refuge, especially for youth who may have little access to community spaces or familial stability, they aren’t exempt from the structures of power which dictate access and wealth within the United States. Abuse often runs rampant, and in a space where so many hold identities oppressed by the state, naming that abuse can be tricky. “Nobody wants to face backlash,” Butters notes. “Nobody wants to be the person who called out this big artist [with] a lot of social capital. Nobody wants to go through that, and get dragged on twitter […] but everyone’s thinking it. So why do we continue to support it? Why do we continue to let it happen?”

Precarious social and financial positions only add to the fear of being dragged. And, Butters points out, folks don’t want to feel “demonized” for confronting members of their own community – especially if those members aren’t cis-het white men. “In the DIY sphere, when somebody is called out, they’ll use language, or their friends will, to protect them and make it seem like they’re super woke.” And when people don’t take responsibility for harm caused, it’s the survivors of that harm that suffer. “People can be shitty,” Butters says. “Queer people can be shitty, women can be shitty, non-binary people can be shitty, people of color can be shitty… and it’s up to us to hold them to a standard.”

Alongside their continued push for accessible spaces in Columbus, in the coming year Butters looks forward to making more music. Frankly, they tell me, it helps them stay alive. “There are certain feelings, and emotions, and words that I don’t know how to accurately say, and sometimes you can’t say things,” they explain. “I don’t want to make another person feel bad. And if I can put those feelings and words and thoughts into a song […] I have more creative control to make sure that what I’m trying to say is conveyed accurately.” And Butters wants everyone in their life to know that they, too, can pick up an instrument. 

“Anyone can make music,” they insist. “You don’t have to be rock god, finger tapping on a telecaster with a capo…you can do anything and somebody out there will enjoy it.”

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ALBUM REVIEW: Shilpa Ray Triumphs Over NYC With ‘Door Girl’

New York, the city that never sleeps, takes an especially hard toll on those who make its endless nights possible: the waiters, the bartenders, the ticket takers who silently put up with endless shit from drunken idiots. The service industry is favored by artists who need to pay their bills, but at what cost? Shilpa Ray provides insight into this experience on Door Girl, an album that recognizes the soul crushing realities of working in the nightlife industry while ultimately overcoming them. A longtime New Yorker whose “day job” inspired the title of her latest release, Ray is more than qualified to expound on the topic.

Door Girl contains moments that are both beautiful and brutal, sometimes at the same time. Songs such as “Morning Terrors Nights of Dread” and “Add Value Add Time” use comforting, doo-wop vibe to gloss over topics such as anxiety over work, broken dreams and the isolation that comes with city life. Ray has a rich, deep voice that can create a dreamy atmosphere, even if she’s singing about creeps in Manhattan who prey on drunk women. But on “EMT Police And The Fire Department” she switches to a snarl in an instant. The song explodes with rage after a monologue that sets the scene for a night of disaster: “The air was so thick you could cut it with a knife/The sweating crowds so thick it could make you want to cut them with a knife.” From her post, she’s both an innocent bystander and complicit in the madness, screaming, “I’m charging eight dollars to go to hell, it’s right upstairs.”

“Revelations Of A Stamp Monkey” takes a completely different approach, with weary spoken lyrics over a hip-hop beat and a verse of rapping by Skurt Vonnegut. The humor of a repeated line – “Popped collar, who popped the collar/Muffin top” creates a stark contrast to one of the album’s most poignant lines, “You wanna know where my heart went? It went straight to making the rent.” 

There was no better venue to debut Door Girl than Pianos, the very place that inspired “EMT Police And The Fire Department.” Located right in the middle of the Lower East Side’s infamous Hell Square, the area explodes with rambunctious crowds on the weekend. But last Wednesday it was calm, the venue packed but politely focused on Ray’s performance. The audience seemed drawn completely into her world, her commanding presence casting a show-tunes glow over the whole affair. The touristy Statue of Liberty crown she wore made the whole thing even more endearing. Maybe it was a reminder of how someone feels when they first move to the city, when it seems romantic and exciting; before the frustrations of the MTA, the high rent and dread of a dead end job grind them down. Maybe it was a symbol of perseverance, that it’s worth it to live in such a demanding place. Or maybe it was just an ironic prop. Either way, it was a perfect accessory for an album that exposes both sides – the magic and the mayhem – of of New York’s hustle and bustle.

PLAYING DETROIT: Thunderbirds Are Now! End 10-Year Hiatus with Trump Protest Anthem

Pioneers of Detroit’s early 2000’s caffeinated punk movement, Thunderbirds Are Now! shake off unofficial retirement to rework an old track for the new regime. “Outsiders” finds our riotous foursome angrier than usual and not at all rusty as they hauntingly remind the elected puppeteers that “we are the outsiders, and we’ll be watching you.”

Our protagonist, a defiant youth clad in a terrifying paper Trump mask (and iconic Vans slip-ons), runs amok in suburbia with an arm full of fireworks while real-life Trump tweets troll the screen. It seems like a dystopian nightmare but the cleverly simplistic visual for “Outsiders” elicits an urgent call to action that overpowers those fears. Remember when Green Day delivered the unnerving American Idiot saga? This follows suit, but makes the Bush administration feel like a thunderstorm compared to Trump’s locust-infested pre-apocalypse.

The chorus kicks off with “You’re not our president!” over an energetic, ragged and shimmering orchestra of punk perfection and we are forced to soak in our own festering distress while still managing to shimmy through the despair. Thunderbirds Are Now! may have stayed quiet over the past decade but they’ve reemerged with an artillery of words that will surely become a rigid patch in the quilt of American protest anthems.

Get fired up with “Outsiders” below and visit Thunderbirds Are Now! Bandcamp to download the latest tracks. All proceeds go to benefit the ACLU.

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PLAYING DETROIT: Pretty Ghouls Go Ultra-Goth On New 7″s

“Grab your socks and comb your locks. Let’s go!” instructs Detroit’s delightfully sinful goth-punk trio Pretty Ghouls.Sure, they seem sweet and saccharine at first glance, channeling the likes of The Shangri-las, but it is their muddy, bloody graveyard grit and grime that solidifies the act as a musical exorcism. Vocalist Asia Mock, guitarist Sarah Stawski, and drummer T.J. Ghoul released not one but two 7-inches last week, each offering different views from their respective six feet under.

The first, Dead Man’s Walk, features the tambourine-heavy zombie-parading title track along with b-side “Emergency 666!” – a panicked, hair thrashing Hole-esque call to arms.

And then there’s Teenage Frankenstein. The title track follows suit with their completely unhinged aesthetic, pushing their collective vocal chords to the brink of breaking. Meanwhile, b-side “Creature Feature” is patient, akin to placing a clawed hand on a record to slow its rotation. Sulking and slinking under the sheets and under the skin, Pretty Ghouls prove themselves to be Detroit Goth royalty with these searing new 7-inches.

Raise spirits from the dead and let Pretty Ghouls haunt your record collection by ordering their newest releases here.

ALBUM REVIEW: Priests “Nothing Feels Natural”

“Art is inherently political. Art informs politics and politics inform art,” said Priests frontwoman Katie Alice Greer in December when her band played a surprise show at Alphaville in Bushwick. This was post-election, and Greer was comforting a distressed audience, but her stance wasn’t surprising; that America is, in reality, a dark place isn’t news to Priests.

It’s fair to say I’ve been waiting for the release of this record, their debut full-length Nothing Feels Natural, for about three years. I first saw Priests at The Pinch in DC when they opened for Pygmy Lush in late 2013. Out came Greer, clad in a velvet leotard, dancing wildly, crooning and alternatively wailing into the microphone. She hypnotized the audience and then woke them up abruptly. She was shameless and original, endearingly femme but fiercely angry at the same time. I’ve been hooked ever since.

On their first release, 2013’s Tape 2, there is a track called “U.S.A. (Incantations).” Backed by horror punk riffs reminiscent of the Twilight Zone theme, Greer tears America a new one. “When people defend the USA I think of Stockholm Syndrome,” she says, “This place was born on a selfish lie. There is nothing to salvage, no great ideals that just got a little skewed.” Greer’s unabashed statement on the truth of America’s crooked imperialism and inequality made me want to scream, made me think that if everyone in the country listened to this song, maybe we’d get our shit together.

We didn’t. Three years after the release of the confrontational Tape 2, Priests have given us Nothing Feels Natural. In true DC DIY fashion, they eschewed the major label release and put the record out on their own label, Sister Polygon.

What makes Priests’ work so potent is their ability to seamlessly tie together the personal and the political. They shift back and forth between themes, illustrating the ways that our political policy affects the moral climate of our society at large as well as the dynamics of our interpersonal relationships. On the first track, opening like a call to arms with its sparse, precise drumming, Greer sings “You want some new brutalism? You want something you can write home about.” This is true; it’s easy to wonder how vitriolic they’ll get in this present political climate, when they were already warning us about America’s rotten core of white male hegemony back in 2013.

But, surprisingly, they don’t go for the overtly political or rabidly angry. The tone is understated, anger served with sarcastic lyrical slights rather than direct address. This album is a testament to the way that toxic masculinity in our public policy and pop culture sifts through layers of influence until it directly affects us in our everyday lives. On “Jj,” the opening riffs are super surfy, and Greer’s vocals are softer and coy. She recounts the beginning of a relationship, and how, as it often does, something changes instantly and everything’s ruined. The moment she finishes wailing “I thought I was a cowboy because I smoked reds,” the tone of the song shifts. Suddenly the surfy riffs are gone, replaced by way more nostalgic, soaring ones. Greer cries, over and over, “You thought I was disgusting,” moving on to say “I wrote a bunch of songs for you but you never knew and you never deserved them.” She does something inherently unfeminine, and that somehow affects Jj’s perception of her, the beautiful perfect creature she’s supposed to be. Every one of us has felt this way. It’s all so familiar — the emotional labor, the self-flagellation, but also the realization of power.

Priests’ interpretation of America’s toxic masculinity is more inclusive than that though, beyond the mere realm of romantic relationships between men and women. “Pink White House” is a powerful rejection of the so-called “American dream,” the supposed end game in all of this. The problem with the American dream, Greer posits, is that it excludes most of America, in all of its white, Christian, patriarchal glory. She points out the irony, repeating “Anything you want, anywhere you want,” over and over. Growing up we’re told we can be whatever we want to be. But in order to fit in this specific, acceptable mold, you actually can’t. But there’s power in the rejection of that ridiculous standard, as Greer would have it: “I’m really not concerned with what you think / You are just a cog in the machine and I am a wet dream soft and mean thick like steam.” A middle finger to the American dream and the expectations of femininity that come with that, she taunts – don’t you judge me, you want me, you want my life.

Overall, this is a great album. It’s audibly interesting, showing a wider range of Priests’ artistic tastes and never redundant in terms of sound. Mostly, though, Priests took the fire and fury expected of them in the age of Trump and turned that on its head, maintaining their raw spirit, but offering a new, more vulnerable spin. These ten tracks relate to our own vulnerabilities and questions of worth as humans, of whether we deserve to be loved and respected just the way we are.

Just as art informs politics and politics inform art, politics inform our interpersonal relationships and vice versa. In “Lelia 20” she sings, “You are a common thief / You’re still using the braun to get the best of me,” but also, “it could be much worse.” It could, but not in this context. Not if you’re still unhappy. That’s what she’s getting across, that you shouldn’t settle for “it could be much worse,” in your own life and relationships. We deserve more, we deserve better.

Priests knew this three years ago, we just weren’t listening.

TRACK REVIEW: Grim Streaker “Guts”

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Grim Streaker photo by Isobel Shirley

Grim Streaker is a new project formed by members of Dinowalrus, The Teen Age, Belle Mare, and Hiccup. Last week they released their first single, “Guts,” produced and recorded by Mike Kutchman (Parquet Courts, WALL and Sharon Van Etten). 

Though they’ve just released one song so far, the noisy punk track contains the energy of several. “Guts” races full speed ahead, brakes screeching just enough to not fully careen out of control. Like their name, Grim Streaker’s first single gives young angst some levity by injecting a dose of dark humor, in verses that mirror each other perfectly. “Oh, I hate your mom/ I hate her good, she’s such a slut,” it begins, only later to declare, “Oh, I hate your dad/ I hate him bad.” Amelia Bushell voices her fiery scorn over frantic flashes of guitars and a heavy, determined beat. There’s something particularly pleasing, especially now, about looking around and not just declaring that everything sucks, but yelling it as loud as you can. For those without a stage, “Guts” is the perfect catharsis. 

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ONLY NOISE: Marching Songs

women's march

It may be difficult to remember what politicized youth culture looks like. Some of us weren’t born in time to witness it at full wattage – in the student-helmed anti-war campaigns of the 1960s. The Civil Rights Movement that marched for the cessation of our own domestic race war. The efforts of second-wave feminists to seal with mortar the gender gap that has plagued most of human history. The Reagan-era LGBT activists, who effectively fought the religious right’s claim that AIDS was solely God’s way of eliminating the gays. Or the more widespread fury Reagan’s cabinet stoked in the poor, the disenfranchised, and the mentally ill when they binned the Mental Health Systems Act just as they were settling into office.

All of these efforts found their way into youth culture, whether directly, or just as an undeniable force of the time. Film, fashion, literature and music reflected the political unrest of their respective era in one way or another. And because youth culture and pop culture are all but synonyms in this country, whatever the “kids” liked was as pervasive back then as it is now.

Despite their history, politics and pop culture have an unsteady relationship. When we look specifically at music and politics, there lies an on-again, off-again affair that is as fickle as a middle school romance. From a zoomed-out, perhaps overly simplified lens, the pattern of their union seems to ebb and flow, with en vogue factions of politically incensed music followed by complacency and nihilism.

The anti-Vietnam War activists were emboldened by the music of Bob Dylan, Edwin Starr, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, to name a few. Seeger and Baez’s politics in particular overlapped with their support for the Civil Rights Movement. While the latter effort inspired the likes of Nina Simone, Gil Scott Heron, and Marvin Gaye, among many. The Black Power Movement and Black Panther Party found an odd ally in the likes of Detroit radicals the MC5, and the proliferation of politico punk during Regan’s reign is undeniable.

Punk was one of the few musical styles that seemed to morph its focus within the same genre. The substance-fueled hedonism of the mid-to-late ‘70s (Richard Hell and the Voidoids, The Dead Boys, The Germs, etc.) eventually gave way to the more substantive and topical songs of bands like Reagan Youth, Dead Kennedys, Youth Brigade, and Crass.

Arguably, the latter camp’s music is less lauded on a critical level, but both have their place in political and sonic history. While first wave punk certainly had many things to rebel against (The Eagles), it was also sprouting out of a time in which youth culture wasn’t as politicized. The Ramones weren’t exactly partisan revolutionaries staging protests and forming their own Weather Underground. First wave punk was more cultural rebellion than it was political rebellion, despite what Malcolm McLaren would have liked you to believe about his Sex Pistols, or his New York Dolls, whom he steered into a phony, late career Communist phase. It was more shock marketing than an actual political statement.

Second wave punk, despite being less inclined to smuggle interesting pop melodies, jazz, and a love of Doo-wop into its songs, had a whole hell of a lot to rebel against. Of course, everybody still hated The Eagles, but the onslaught of Reagan’s conservative policies, the oversold, underperforming promise of a suburban utopia (let alone an urban one), and the apolitical punk movement just before, left more to be desired.

The very aimless debauchery of previous punks inspired D.C.’s Straight Edge Movement, helmed by Minor Threat, whereas bands across the country needed only speed as an impetus for changing the game. Once showing its component parts of rock n’ roll and other beloved genres, punk had grown a thicker skin and put on a war helmet. When hardcore emerged with bands like Black Flag and Bad Brains, it somehow morphed what punk meant for generations. It had literally been hardened, and shined like a weapon. No longer existing for the sake of its own exploratory purposes, but as a vessel for discourse and agitation.

And it wasn’t just the punks who were getting political. The Reagan administration saw criticism from musicians obscure and mainstream both. Let us not forget that despite Reagan’s misuse of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.,” as his re-election campaign score, the song is in fact a damning reprimand of Reagan’s mistreatment of American veterans and his economic policies. Even His Purple Majesty Prince used music to criticize Reagan in cuts like, “Ronnie Talk to Russia” and “Sign o’ the Times.”

Sadly, none of this has happened in my lifetime. Though it may not be entirely true, I feel as though I have lived in a time period without its own protest music. I was too young to understand the relevance of ‘90s rap, let alone remember it as it happened. Only now, with detached hindsight can I see that it too was protest music, no matter how much the media tried to demonize it. I remember a smattering of artists, mostly smallish in name, condemn the Bush administration in the early 2000s…but I also remember that when a mainstream band tried to be critical, they got panned.

I will never forget how unexpected country sweethearts the Dixie Chicks nearly lost their fan base when in 2003, singer Natalie Maines spoke out against Bush at the Sheperd’s Bush Empire Theater in London:

“Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”

I didn’t start immediately loving every song the Dixie Chicks put out, but I was sure as hell proud that a mainstream country act would risk the bulk of their followers to speak their mind.

There has long been a lull in political music. The eight years of Obama’s presidency have left us complacent – and they shouldn’t have. There is always something to improve. Just as the second crop of punks made the genre their own; just as the second wave feminists worked to continue what the first wave had laid for them; just as the Black Lives Matter movement has taken the still blazing torch from the Civil Rights activists; it is the turn of the artists, the authors, and the songwriters, to match the task at hand with cultural inspiration. Fiona Apple knows this, as she’s already given us two anti-Trump tunes. There was of course her Christmas parody, “Trump’s Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire” released just around the holidays. But her new song, “Tiny Hands” is one to march to.

PLAYING DETROIT: Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas “Hot Damn”

hot damn

A firecracker personified, Jessica Hernandez (and her Deltas, respectively) embodies the grit, the groove, and the gloriously kaleidoscopic rock nuances that Detroit is best known for. Their notable Gogol Bordello-esque flamboyance and unapologetically cool gypsy-punk vibe has shaped the radius of the Detroit rock radar for the past few years both growing and refining along the way. Returning with their first single since 2014, “Hot Damn” is spicy, seductive and demanding. Aggressive fuzz-filled guitar and drums that err on the punk side of the spectrum pair well with the passionately temperate rabbit hole free fall that is “Hot Damn.” Hernandez’s vibrant vibrato seems inhuman, like a bird putting a fork in an electrical outlet. It shakes, rattles and yet pulls back effectively to remind the listener that Hernandez’s specialty is her range as much as it is her ability to control the vocal chaos. “I can be your baby / I know that I seem crazy” Hernandez howls, summoning what can only be imagined as a lover on all fours, Hernandez tugging the leash upward. Even if the single isn’t intended to be as in-your-face and commanding as it sounds, it elicits a volcanic disturbance that is as much of a choose-your-own-adventure as it is an unhinged anthem for the thick skinned and love craving masses.

“Hot Damn” is available on Spotify now.

 

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.

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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.

 

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ONLY NOISE: Dropping The Neutron Bomb

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Did my dad know that he might ruin me with a book? Of course not. What could a book possibly do? It wasn’t Story of the Eye, or Tropic of Cancer or even The Outsiders. It was non-fiction. Educational. All he knew was that his 12-year-old daughter was beginning to dress funny and gravitate towards a kind of music he couldn’t relate to. So, he did what any supportive parent would do: he bought me a book on the subject. But this was no mere book.

We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk was an oral history of punk’s first wave in Southern California. Much like its New York predecessor Please Kill Me, Neutron Bomb compiles hundreds of interviews with musicians, tastemakers, groupies and promoters into a sensational narrative. Edited by acclaimed music journalist Marc Spitz and former Masque owner Brendan Mullen, this was the book that changed everything for me – my answer to The Catcher in the Rye. It was a bomb indeed; reconfiguring everything I had ever known about music, writing, and debauchery – which as it turns out, all go hand in hand.

Informative the book was; innocent it was not. What my dad had unknowingly placed in my crimeless little hands was an instruction manual on bad behavior. He might as well have handed me the keys to his liquor cabinet. The pages were ripe with forbidden fruit, including, but not limited to the offensive quotes of The Runaways’ manager Kim Fowley (the “C” word abounds), anecdotes about shooting up with gutter water, and spreads of full frontal nudity. Full frontal MALE nudity!

It was a great time to be in the sixth grade. While everyone was speeding through the second Harry Potter tome, I was reading about people on speed, cutting themselves with broken bottles, smearing their malnourished bodies with peanut butter, and having all the unprotected sex. And of course, there was the music, the wild disruptor that was the birth of L.A. punk.

I am reminded of these growing pains with the recent publishing of Slash: A Punk Magazine From Los Angeles: 1977-80. Slash, which first came to my attention while reading We Got the Neutron Bomb, seemed to be the West Coast comrade of Punk Magazine and Search and Destroy. It was a newsprint rag of epic proportions when it came to chronicling the dizzying L.A. garage scene from its inception to its demise. The editorial backbone of the zine was as colorful as the bands they immortalized. At the core of Slash were founders Steve Samiof and Melanie Nissen, who recognized the importance of documenting the careers of the commercially challenged. Where A&R reps may have heard mayhem, the crew at Slash magazine heard the last cries of revolution. Or perhaps screams.

Slash championed the “dangerous” sound; bands like The Screamers, The Germs, Catholic Discipline, The Bags, X, all of whom cropped up in Neutron Bomb alongside countless others. But the magazine wasn’t only throwing roses. If Samiof and Nissen were the core of the paper, then writer/editor Claude Bessy, a.k.a. “Kickboy Face” was its blackened little heart. I remember Kickboy’s quotes in Neutron Bomb being true gems, and his belligerent snarl wasn’t any softer in the pages of Slash. In an early editorial from ’77, Kickboy lays into the giants of status quo rock:

“May the punks set this rat-infested industry on fire. It sure could use a little brightness! So there will be no objective reviewing in these pages, and definitely no unnecessary dwelling upon the bastards who’ve been boring the living shit out of us for years with their concept albums, their cosmic discoveries and their pseudo-philosophical inanities.” “

…let them remember the old days when they’d rather die than be seen with socialite creeps and being heard talking trash and then let them shit in their pants with envy. As The Clash say, NO ELVIS, BEATLES OR ROLLING STONES IN 1977!”

Kickboy Face was to Slash what Lester Bangs was to Creem, but probably more hated. He liked it that way. On the anthology’s cover is a small beckon for letters to the editor: “Write Kickboy! He wants you to respond. (He thrives on abuse).”

Abuse was something so pervasive in the scene, particularly with one of its most disturbingly fascinating bands: The Germs. The Germs, along with their ill-fated lead “singer” Darby Crash, were the nucleus of both Neutron Bomb and a second oral history by Mullen entitled Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs.

After plowing through the first volume, Lexicon Devil was wrapped and waiting under the Christmas tree, a setting so innocuous it made the book’s hedonistic contents all the more comical. This collection focused on the self-destructive tendencies of Darby Crash, nee Jan Paul Beahm, who died of an intentional overdose at twenty-two. While this fate was not rare in the punk scene East or West, The Germs left behind a concise body of work that was far from generic. They sounded only like themselves, and as with most explosive art, weren’t fully recognized until long after their disbandment.

The twisted history of The Germs became such a fixation that years later I would agree to getting a Germs Burn: an idiotic and unhygienic branding created when a burn-bearing pal sears an entire cigarette into your left wrist. Start to finish. It was one of the many grotesque rituals championed by Circle One, The Germs’ own little groupie cult. At the time it seemed like some honor had been bestowed upon me, but more than anything it hurt like hell. I hid it from my parents for years, and I’m lucky it didn’t become gangrenous. No one even notices it anyway. Zero punk points awarded.

Throughout Neutron Bomb, Lexicon Devil and Slash, there was continual mention of a film in which all of these characters came to life: The Decline of Western Civilization by Penelope Spheeris. At the time this film was referred to as a holy grail: out of print, impossible to find, etc. Whether or not that was true is now nebulous to me, but at the time I, of course, believed it. So imagine my thrill up on seeing a bootleg copy on the shelves at Singles Going Steady, a punk record store in Seattle. The DVD was certainly bootlegged and overpriced, but it was mine. I was about to watch the most seminal documentary in punk rock history…with my parents.

It quickly became apparent that I hadn’t been reading cute rock n’ roll stories for the past few years. If the music alone didn’t alienate my folks enough, Decline would make a point of doing so. This was 100 minutes of my idols crumbling before me. Darby Crash: too loaded to sing into the mic. Lee Ving: misogynistic and homophobic. Ron Reyes: terrible lyricist. At its best the film spends time with X, whose John Doe, Billy Zoom and Exene Cervenka are actually intelligent, coherent human beings. At its worst are suburban kids trying to justify their swastika armbands.

Not everyone was pleased with Penelope Spheeris for this representation. Others didn’t give a fuck. But as I sat in between my parents, recoiling at a scene in which Darby Crash and a woman named Michelle laugh about finding a dead man in her backyard (LOL!), I realized that maybe liking the music was enough. I didn’t need idols or ideals to know a good record. As Kickboy Face once wrote:

“But seriously now, stop fuckin’ worrying silly about lost ideals and forgotten causes. You’re still here, aren’t you?”

PLAYING DETROIT: The Gories Return!

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Forged from the weightiness of post-war blues and the primally riotous audacity of 60’s garage punk, Detroit‘s scuzz rockers the Gories return to their hometown his Friday. Mick Collins, Danny Kroha and Peggy O’Neill formed the Gories (sans bass) back in 1986 and released three records between 1989 and their tumultuous break-up in ’92. During their undisclosed reign as underground groove-punk royalty, their influence was more wide reaching than their dismal record sales or crusty notoriety. Like true punks, the Gories’ reputation was marred with scowls and “wtf is this shit” variety, mostly due to their raunchy, primitive approach to rock. It’s an attitude that would later have Detroit’s prodigal son and father of Third Man Records, Jack White, exclaiming that the Gories “made people with Les Pauls and Marshall amps look like idiots.”

After a 17 year hiatus (during which punk died, was reincarnated into radio-friendly sewage, died again and is only now beginning to wear its old skin) the Gories reunited in 2009 for a European tour and again in 2010 to hustle their grime across North America. Since then they have played a handful of shows, though sparingly, but enough to remind us that true punk never really dies and what the Gories have given us is more than half-assed nostalgia on life support; it’s a tantrum.

Oozing with sexual deviance, masked by the hip-shaking, beer-bottle smashing juxtaposition of aggravated shimmy and shake, “Nitroglycerine,” from the band’s sophomore record, I Know You Fine, But How You Doin’ manages to box the un-boxable sticky, sweaty, no-fucks-given tale of Detroit’s premier garage punk pioneers.  A perplexing mix of John Lee Hooker and the Cramps, the Gories hoot and howl while channeling some Velvet Underground-level chaos as the guitars suffer battling seizures, and the drums find home in a constituent heartbeat-beat reminding us that the band’s homeostasis, although compromised, is far from expired. The lyrics “She’s volatile/she’s my baby”  are delivered with some 1950’s innocence or doo-wop cadence but is quickly dismantled by a rapid-fire sex-beat that keeps us guessing even 26 years later.

Get weird with the Gories 1990 video for “Nitroglycerine” below and catch the Gories with Pretty Ghouls, Mexican Knives and Trash DJ’s at El Club Friday August 5th, 2016 | Tickets $20

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ONLY NOISE: Memento Mori-Alan Vega

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“I think all art comes out of conflict.” It was the American novelist Joyce Carol Oates who spoke these words, but it was Alan Vega who lived them.

Vega, who fronted the indescribable proto-punk duo Suicide from 1970 to Saturday, has unfortunately passed away over the weekend at 78. His death lengthens a devastating list of artists we’ve lost this year. Henry Rollins broke the news with a statement from Vega’s family.

I woke Sunday morning to word of his death, and instantly that phrase sprang to mind: “all art comes out of conflict.” Art is not only born of chaos, it is chaos. Art is conflict. And what artist exemplified this truth more than Alan Vega? His 46-year partnership with Martin Rev as Suicide (they never called it quits) produced a body of work that is sublimely discordant-like an Edgerton snapshot of fruit being eviscerated by a bullet. An explosion made delicate by means of destruction.

Vega’s music is a monument to the avant garde, the dark, and the soulful. And it is, for me, the embodiment of everything I look for in art. Something dangerous, yet repulsively gorgeous. Something that makes you fear for your own sanity. Suicide’s eponymous debut from 1977 is as awash with this kind of dissonance as it is sounds of the future. Its severity is matched only by its simplicity-Vega’s croons and shrieks loping over Rev’s unrelenting synths and drum machine. That record predicted post punk before punk had learned how to spell its own name. You can hear its influence in Throbbing Gristle’s work, and Sonic Youth’s and even Bruce Springsteen’s; the latter admittedly an enormous Suicide fan. The Boss has not only attributed “State Trooper” off of 1982’s Nebraska to Suicide’s influence-he also covered the duo’s song “Dream Baby Dream” throughout his career.

Springsteen recently paid homage to Vega with a eulogy he published on his website:

“Over here on E Street, we are saddened to hear of the passing of Alan Vega, one of the great revolutionary voices in rock and roll. The bravery and passion he showed throughout his career was deeply influential to me. I was lucky enough to get to know Alan slightly and he was always a generous and sweet spirit. The blunt force power of his greatest music both with Suicide and on his solo records can still shock and inspire today. There was simply no one else remotely like him.”

It might seem a stretch that one of America’s most successful musicians would have such obscure tastes, but if you listen to Suicide tracks like “Ghost Rider” and “Frankie Teardrop,” the influence might not be so shocking. Springsteen is known for his pointblank narratives of working class drudgery. That same desolation can be found in “Frankie Teardrop,” a disturbing tale of a disgruntled factory worker who massacres his family in a fit of insanity.

Suicide is an album that still sounds treacherous today. This cannot be said of much from its era. It is a difficult thing to admit, as it was an exceptional period in American music. However, I am aware of its historical relevance-that perhaps a Television gig in 2016 might not be as reckless as it was in ’77. Suicide on the other hand, has remained a lung-splintering scream frozen in time. A photograph taken with a rapatronic shutter. But don’t take my word for it. Go ahead. Cut the jams at your next party and put on “Frankie Teardrop” instead. See what happens.

It is important for music, or at least some music to incite panic. In their earlier years Vega and Rev did just that, and drank up the repercussions firsthand. Their shows bear the deviant legacy of hell raisers like Iggy Pop and GG Allin. In 2008, Vega recounted an especially perilous gig to The Guardian:

“That would be the show in Glasgow in 1978 when someone threw an axe at my head. We were supporting the Clash and I guess we were too punk even for the punk crowd. They hated us. I taunted them with, ‘You fuckers have to live through us to get to the main band.’ That’s when the axe came towards my head, missing me by a whisker. It was surreal, man. I felt like I was in a 3-D John Wayne movie. But that was nothing unusual. Every Suicide show felt like world war three in those days. Every night I thought I was going to get killed. The longer it went on, the more I’d be thinking, ‘Odds are it’s going to be tonight.'”

I sometimes feel that Suicide were the Dylan-going-electric of punk rock. And while I suspect that thought would cause Vega to roll in his grave, it’s a comparison I find comfort in. When the world cried “Judas!” at Dylan’s new noise, it wasn’t the sound they were screaming at-it was the icon he burned and the bird that rose from it. Punk was so busy edifying its defiant image that it was out-defied by Vega and Rev…the ultimate prank. It’s pretty funny, if you think about it.

But despite all the mayhem in Suicide’s history, all the near-death evenings and endless assaults, Vega remained a sincere artist, a loving family man, and a hilarious interviewee. In the same interview from ’08 he recalled the shift between being public enemy #1 and becoming an “entertainer”:

“People were looking to be entertained, but I hated the idea of going to a concert in search of fun. Our attitude was, ‘Fuck you buddy, you’re getting the street right back in your face. And some.’

The axe in Glasgow was just one of many weapons hurled at us. When we played in Metz, someone scored a direct hit on me with a monkey wrench. I’ve still got the scar on my head. Supporting Elvis Costello in Brussels, we provoked a full-scale riot and the venue was stormed by police letting off tear-gas canisters. Then something very strange happened. We headlined our own tour of Britain and ended up in Edinburgh. Two songs in and there was no riot, which was very, very unusual. Then we started to see people move around. I turned to Marty and said, ‘Here we go – watch out for flying objects.’ To my amazement, people started dancing. I turned back to Marty and said, ‘We’re finished, our career is over.’

We’ve turned into fucking entertainers. It was never meant to turn out that way. But what can you do? People are completely unshockable now. Even if you brought a fresh corpse out on stage and started eating it with a fork, no one would bat an eyelid. Still, one of the things about playing live these days is that at least we know we’re not going to die on stage. That’s kinda nice, man.”

Vega’s wry sense of humor always peeked through his work, even when veiled with the most hideous snarl. It surprisingly wasn’t always doom and gloom with Suicide; their fragility surfaced on cuts like “Girl,” “Dream Baby Dream,” and “Child, It’s a New World.” The former being my personal favorite-and not a bad tune for a romp might I add. In spite of the band’s propensity for violence and distortion, they were also vulnerable…far more than they’d have liked you to believe. This diversity was apparent to those who took time to listen between the crashing beer bottles. For them, Suicide were a beacon of possibility; a manifesto for undefined sound.

Alan Vega may have not wanted to be an entertainer; that’s just what happened over time. More accurately, Vega was an artist. A real conflicted motherfucker.

R.I.P Alan. Thank you for the noise.

 

PLAYING DETROIT: Dear Darkness “Get it Here” EP

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Photo by Chantal Elise as part of the “In the Band: Michigan Music Behind a Feminist Lens.” For more of her work, head to www.chantalelise.com.

If Siouxsie Sioux and the cast of Hedwig and the Angry Inch shared a seedy punk venue greenroom where they exchanged Bowie impressions and candy necklace bites, you might have a slight grasp on what Dear Darkness sounds like. Self-described as somewhere between “kitsch and oblivion,” Detroit drama queens Stacey MacLeod and Samantha Linn released their latest pleasantly demented and perfectly untamed EP Get it Here earlier this week. This perplexing polyamorous marriage of grit, grime, glitter and gorgeously unique explorations of voice (both internal and external) revel in a self-made turbulence much like a wave pool in a motel bathtub.

Don’t mistaken aforementioned “kitsch” as a dismissal of sincerity. Although riotously playful, Get it Here provokes a teeth grinding, guttural exorcism that just happens to be covered in frosting and sprinkles. Lyrically, the EP kicks and screams but not without cracks where a beautifully strange vulnerability pushes through. The swollen, voice breaking delivery of the lyrics: “Why don’t you notice me? I’m right here” from the track “You Ain’t Tried it With Me” encompasses the tug-of-war vibe of the entire collection. The drums are scathing, the guitar restless. and the warbled and tortured ferocity of MacLeod and Linn’s harmonizing fuse to redefine punk, pop and human fragility in one fell swoop. Yes, the EP is shockingly consistent but that observation seems to belittle the entirety of what Dear Darkness is attempting to do here. More than consistency, what they’ve managed to do in five songs and under 18 minutes is, above all else, really fucking special.

Indulge in Dear Darkness’s rare breed of strange on “Get it Here” below:

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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.

PLAYING DETROIT: Cheerleader “Bitchcraft”

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There is nothing coy about Flint-based Cheerleader’s first full-length album, Bitchcraft. It is a riotous collection of defiant anti-apologies, that if delivered in any way other than Cheerleader’s impenetrable assault, would reinforce the very holding back they’re fighting against. Bitchcraft is the ultimate “fuck you” manifesto aimed to destroy, disarm, and devour the state of counterrevolution. Fully equipped with an advanced artillery of punk purism and unflinching feminism, Bitchcraft doesn’t knock. It grants itself permission.

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The power of Christina “Polly” McCollum (lead vocals, guitar), Ashley MacDermaid (bass), and Nisa Seal (drums) is not contingent on image, labels or accessibility, rather their undeniable cohesion in being able to tear down the construct and crippling societal misogyny without compromising sincerity. The album opens with a shrill “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, HUH? WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?” which feels more like a dare than a question. The words bleed into the opening track “Beauty Queen” where McCollum delivers the first of many deafening blows with repeating the lines “I am more than my body.” Although the album clocks in just over 23 minutes, don’t mistaken its brevity for a shortcut. Quite the contrary. Cheerleader is free of filler or watery withdrawals, saying what needs to be said without finding polite euphemisms to spare feelings. Closing out the track “Friday Night Bites” during an Addams Family worthy bass line, McCollum exclaims: “No one cared about you then/no one cares about you now,” a testament to that one thing we have always wanted to say to that person we’ve always wanted to say it to. That’s the beauty of the anti-beauty of Cheerleader’s debut album. They have found a way to inspire without the squishy connotation.

To say this is an important record for women is like saying it’s wet when it rains. The overarching message of reprisal through rebellion and tenacity channeled by audacity is what, when conjoined with their tightly woven, Bikini Kill sludge, elevates Bitchcraft from an argument to an uprising.

Listen to Bitchcraft in its entirety here and check out the track “Beauty Queen” below:

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PLAYING DETROIT: “I’m Feelin’ Mean” Playlist

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I’m not okay. I’ve said this out loud and silently in mirrors at least a three hundred times over the past week. I’m. Feeling. Mean. Winter is hovering around like an unwanted party guest and I’ve exhausted pop radio’s repetitive and empty saccharine excuses. When you feel that the world is against you and your most indestructible desire is to destruct, destroy, and stick it to the man, there will always be punk music to be the anguished devil on your shoulder telling the angel to GTFO. These feelings are necessary. Embrace them when they rear their disruptive heads and tap into that under-the-skin earthquake of whatever it is that’s pissing you off, and remember that music’s got your back. I’ve curated a soundtrack of thrashing, unsettling, and provocative punk straight from Detroit‘s veins, both past and present to amplify and detoxify.

1. Negative Approach – “Nothing”

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Labeled as one of the reigning pioneers of hardcore punk in the midwest, Negative Approach formed in ’81 and had a lasting impact for the scenes to follow. They broke up in ’84 but have returned over recent years to perform some of the most amped up shows in Detroit’s history. “Nothing” encapsulates what has made Negative Approach legendary with its screeching guitar, saliva soaked screaming, and anti-conformist, nihilistic give-no-fucks attitude.

2. Timmy’s Organism – “Heartless Heathen” 

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Timmy Vulgar of Third Man Record’s beloved Timmy’s Organism is considered the hardest working punk in the industry. Previously Vulgar lent his twisted visions to the late 90’s Epileptix and Clone Defects and the warped roughness of  Human Eye and the prig-punk punch Reptile Forcefield. But with Organism, Timmy has gained serious momentum throwing inhibition to the wind with psychedelic riffs paired with stabbing percussions, all framed by Timmy’s own brand of in your face vocals. “Heartless Heathen” is infectious.

3. Protomartyr – “Jumbo’s”

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Protomartyr is known for their 70’s post-punk, Motor City garage rock fusion. From 2012’s No Passion All Technique,  “Jumbo’s” is Protomartyr at their best. Guteral, echoed, vocals drowned out by drugged bass lines and clashing high hat heavy drums are the antithesis of pro-establishment. Protomartyr carved out their own sweet spot by making angst accessible and catchy.

4. Gore Gore Girls – “Hard Enough”

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Formed in 1997 by Amy Gore, Gore Gore Girls incorporate harmonizing with a surfer punk edge in “Hard Enough” off of 2007’s Get The Gore. At a time when punk in Detroit was losing its voice, these girls broke through the stagnation of the late 90’s and gave new life to garage-rock era by infusing caffeinated instrumentals and unapologetic vocals that feels like a thrasher film meshed with a break-up mix tape.

4. Trash Brats – “Someday is Too Late”

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Maybe one of the most forgotten vestiges of sleazy glam-punk, Trash Brats never wanted to be taken seriously. But over time, their music still remains in the dusty attics of our collective music story. This steady and slow jam from ’90 cries “They say that Jesus saves, but tell me who?” over static punk chords that are as iconic as they are ironic.

5. The Meatmen – “I Want Drugs”

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I remember my mom blasting this as a kid. My parents were punks and The Meatmen were THE punks. From their ’95 album Pope on a Rope, “I Want Drugs” rants off names of drugs from heroin to demerol as if it were a coked out nursery rhyme. The Meatmen were raunchy, vile, and a vital piece to Detroit’s punk puzzle.

6. Child Bite – “Ancestral Ooze” 

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Timmy Vulgar might be considered the hardest working punk in the biz, but I know Child Bite to be the most relentless band of modern traditionalist punks around. They are seemingly always on tour and are forever pumping out unforgiving fuck-you anthems, like this track off of their 2014 release Strange Waste.

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ARTIST INTERVIEW: Behind The Scenes With Thundera

 

I met with Thundera on January 19 at Smash Studios in Midtown, where they practice weekly. I got there a few minutes late and could hear through the door that they were in the middle of a song. I awkwardly stood outside, debating whether I should wait for the song to be over. Even muffled through the door, they sounded great- hard, steady rock that gives a nod to punk without relying on the simplicity that is sometimes a cliche of the genre. Finally, I walked in.

Thundera formed in 2011, their first practice sessions starting that Spring. After a string of bad luck with bassists, they decided to stop looking for one about a year ago, and remain a trio: Rissa on vocals, Marianna on guitar, and Bruni on drums. Rissa and Marianna met at City College of New York, where Marianna is finishing her last semester, and Rissa just graduated. After some hesitation (“I get nervous about these things”), Marianna answered a flyer that Rissa put up. Marianna’s sister then found Bruni on craigslist. “She was looking for a used car, though,” Bruni jokes.

We could faintly hear the sounds of a cover band start practicing in the room next to us – it sounded like they were playing a bad version of “Roxanne.”

Bruni said that she had been looking for a band for awhile before meeting the rest of Thundera, but hadn’t had much luck. “Some Craigslist ads are really weird…  there was always some weird angle to it. Some people get really specific. Like – we really love Meg White or whatever. So you have to kind of look like her. And you have to play this way, the way she did in this concert. It’s not a costume party!”

Rissa’s flyer mentioned the bands she was hoping to find a common interest with potential bandmates: Joan Jett, The Clash, (Well, I like The Clash,” she clarified) Iggy Pop, and Bikini Kill. Though those groups are the band’s foundation, Marianna admits a love for grunge acts such as Soundgarden and Nirvana, and Bruni has eclectic tastes – except for thrash metal. After a brief discussion about whether early Metallica falls under that genre, she clarifies, “They’re still audible in their early stuff. I mean when people are singing like, rarghgargharhga.”

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The way they chose their name fits the trio’s playful, laid-back vibe: they drew names out of a hat. Potential titles include The Swirls and The Electronics, but Thundera, which was Bruni’s suggestion, was chosen. Was it rigged? “Maybe,” Bruni laughs. “It was her hat,” Rissa adds.

The cover band next door began an attempt at Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.

Rissa says they try to play two shows a month; they’ve played venues like the Paper Box, Bowery Electric, The Fifth Estate, and The Grand Victory. When I ask them what their favorite venue is, Bruni jokes, “Madison Square Garden. I like the way they treat me there,” before agreeing that it depended on the venue’s sound. “We’re really lucky, because we know a lot of female bands,” Bruni said. “We play a lot with the same bands, because we’re kind of all grouped together in the Riot Grrl/punk scene. Other shows that we book independently, we’re kind of the only girls.”

“It’s a nice little community to be a part of,” Rissa adds. But, being in a working band takes, well, work, Bruni says:  “People want to say that they’re dedicated to music, but because it’s something artistic they also wanna say they’re not tied down to it. But you have to be really serious about it if you want to get anything out of it. It’s like having another job.”

I asked Thundera about their recordings on Reverb Nation, and they collectively groan and describe the recording process as “a weird set-up.” At the end of 2015 they recorded 11 songs for their next album, were starting the mixing process the weekend after the interview. Hopefully, they said, it would be done by the summer.

For a good idea of the band’s sound, check out their performance of “Thundera:”

 

 

ARTIST INTERVIEW: Lithuania

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The main members of  Lithuania are involved in other, vastly different projects: Dominic Angelella plays in the psych-rock band DRGN KING, and Eric Slick plays drums with Dr. Dog. The pair have been friends since meeting at Philadelphia’ UArts, and though it took a decade of collaboration, they made a high-energy, raw album about their friendship, appropriately titled Hardcore Friends. After the record’s release in September, they went on a tour with Beach Slang that ended late November. After their set at The Knitting Factory last night, they shed some light on topics like when the next Lithuania album is coming out, what makes a hardcore friend, and what they think about Steely Dan. Read the interview and check out their album below.

AudioFemme: You guys played a new song tonight, “Holy Water?”

Eric: “Holy Water,” yeah. We’re doing a new record, hopefully in the Spring. We already have about eight, nine new songs. The whole tour we just did with Beach Slang, we’ve been rotating these songs. It’s super exciting. It took us a long time to get the Hardcore Friends project to complete itself and this one’s coming along a lot faster. We worked on it on and off for about ten years. 

AF: Whose hands are on the Hardcore Friends album art? Is that you two?

Eric: It’s ours, it’s Dominic and myself. It’s a fake blood handshake- that’s all corn syrup. We shot that cover in the winter of 2015. We were outside, doing the handshake, and it was… gross. Corn syrup all over your hands is gross, especially when it’s freezing. It wasn’t as glamorous as the shot looks.

AF: Since you and Dominic have been friends and collaborators for so long, what’s your definition of a good friend, or a hardcore friend?

Eric: The title is kind of a pun, because we grew up going to hardcore shows together. We had been through everything two friends could go through in the course of our friendship, and so when it came time to title the record we thought it would be appropriate to not only name the thing Hardcore Friends but to also have a song about the trials and tribulations of our friendship. So yeah, a hardcore friend is someone who’s loyal, somebody who will be there for you until you die.

AF: How was your tour with Beach Slang?

Eric: It was amazing. They were so gracious to take us out. We had an amazing time. Nothing bad happened, except that our heater broke in our van, so we were freezing cold from Michigan all the way to Boston.

Dominic: I had a moment with their record, because I hadn’t listened to it before we went on tour with them, because it wasn’t out yet. And when we got back and did Thanksgiving and put it on I was like, “Holy shit.” Because live, they’re so great, they’re so powerful, but the record is a totally different thing.

AF: And you said the next Lithuania record is coming out in the Spring, right?

Eric: We’re going to start demoing on Monday, and then probably record sometime in the Spring, and then hopefully it’ll come out in 2017. That’s my guess, or the end of 2016. I’m just gonna say it, and put it into existence, so that we get it done. And not wait another ten years before something happens.

AF: Will Ricardo (Lithuania’s touring drummer) be playing on that record?

Eric: Oh yeah. We’re going to fully integrate him. Hardcore Friends is only Dominic and myself, with some added guests here and there. We’re gaining more confidence with Ricardo on drums, and we’re excited to explore that realm. He’s so talented, and generous, musically.

AF: As a drummer, do you give him a lot of direction? Or do you let him do his own thing?

Eric: The whole thing with Ricardo in this band is for me to relinquish my control, and my more obsessive drum tendencies. I’m not going to direct him, I just want him to figure it out for himself. And so far, he’s been intuitive and I love what he does.

AF: Which do you prefer, being behind the drumset or fronting a band?

Eric: Apples and oranges. They’re so different. One offers a direct line of communication with the audience, and one’s a little bit abstract… being back there is kind of weird, sitting down and playing a bunch of weird circles. It’s a pretty abstract concept. But being upfront, you can make eye contact with people, and connect, and it’s just a totally different experience. Not better or worse. Both are great.

AF: You two met at UArts; did you study jazz guitar there?

Dominic: I did, yeah. It’s weird how much I still think about it when I play, even in this band. The stuff you learn sticks around. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Eric: Yeah, I was improvising last night, and it brought me right back to when I used to do it all the time. Or even when I’m playing with Dr. Dog, it comes out.

Dominic: Whenever I see you play with them, I just think about Steely Dan, because you’re just playing sick, seventies Steely Dan stuff. Everyone is doing their thing but you’re just doing this shuffle.

Eric: I do think about Steely Dan a lot, so that’s very astute. I think about Steely Dan way more than I should.

Dominic: As we all do. We’re working on a podcast about Steely Dan.

AF: Just about Steely Dan?

Eric: Yeah, Exclusively. “The Danvinci Code.”

AF: That’s amazing.

Dominic: That’s what we’re going to focus on next year.

AF: Speaking of Dr. Dog, it seems like in recent years- maybe after you toured with The Lumineers- you’ve been playing way bigger venues, like Madison Square Garden, and Terminal 5.

Eric: Yeah. We did Madison Square Garden over the summer, and we’re doing Terminal 5 in March. It’s something I still don’t know how to process. I have no idea how we did it. We’re about to tour, two weeks on, two weeks off for the next couple of months. This year we’re going to have a pretty crazy stage production and do new songs.

AF: Do you think you’d get restless if you weren’t involved in more than one project?

Dominic: I used to feel that way. I used to do three to five projects at once. And then recently, I’ve been really into focusing on one, as long as that thing is active. As soon as it isn’t active I need to do something else. It’s been cool, figuring out how to sustain yourself on only music. It’s a hustle, but it can be really rewarding. 

AF: I’ll wrap this up with one more question: What bands or records are you into right now?

Eric: There’s a band called Palm that I can’t get enough of, and Cass McCombs, we can’t get enough of. He’s where we both meet. Dominic and I completely agree on Cass McCombs. We should do a commercial.

Dominic: Like a 30-second Super Bowl commercial, where you’re the proggy Zappa guy and I’m the beer-rock dude. “We don’t agree on much, but what we do agree on is Cass McCombs.”

Eric: There’s so much music to listen to.

Dominic: There’s a quote, like “I would gladly give up my space in a band if there could only be 100 bands.” And occasionally I’m like, maybe I feel that way.. But I don’t really. I wouldn’t want to stop playing.

 

 

 

 

LIVE REVIEW: Honduras @ The Knitting Factory

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Minutes before the band gets on stage, I watch the crowd come together. For some reason at Knitting Factory, it’s always a mix of people you wouldn’t imagine listening to the artists playing that night, trickling in from the bar or stumbling upon a cheap show with nothing else to do.

Brooklyn’s own Honduras took the stage, only a couple of months off the release of their first full-length, Rituals. 

They’re a punk band who sound something like the Sex Pistols with a dash of Blur (I keep feeling surprised Honduras aren’t from London), or perhaps their contemporaries, Parquet Courts, with that similar lo-fi feel.

The sound translates uniquely to the stage. There’s nothing too flashy about the performance, making you appreciate how clean Tyson Moore’s guitar work is juxtaposed with Josh Wehle’s gritty drums and Pat Philips’s muffled vocals.

It’s easy to pick up on the band’s subtle nuances. Paul Lizarraga likes to play his bass with the strap down low. Moore makes the most of his curly mop of hair, playing his Flying V with a ton of energy. And lead singer and rhythm guitarist Philips is the lovechild of Bradford Cox and Alex Turner. Tumbling on stage, his guitar strap falling off, there was something carnal about the way he clearly didn’t give a fuck.

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The boys will be playing Knitting Factory again on December 14th, and Mercury Lounge on January 9th. Check out the music video for their first single “Paralyzed” here:

All photos by Ysabella Monton for AudioFemme.

VIDEO REVIEW: Dilly Dally “The Touch”

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If your band practice doesn’t include hazy shadows, falling feathers, slinking felines and unbridled pain, you’re doing it wrong. Or, you’re just not on the same level as Toronto’s Dilly Dally (which would be admittedly hard to achieve). Led by long-time friends Katie Monks (vocals/guitar) and Liz Ball (guitar), the band has been bursting through unsuspecting earbuds everywhere after releasing their debut album Sore in early October and making waves at New York’s CMJ music festival.

Now they’ve shared their music video for “The Touch,” a song that Monks revealed was written with a very specific, urgent purpose: “I wrote this song for a friend of mine who was having suicidal thoughts… the song attempts to reach him in his dark place, and then lure him away from there.” Monks makes his pain her own in the black-and-white video by yelling, practically swallowing the mic, and holding onto her guitar like a life preserver. In the background, there’s a calming influence via her bandmates, their heads down as they focus on their instruments as feathers float and swirl around them.

As the band plays the heavy, fast beat and snarling guitars, the video occasionally cuts to a figure dressed in black, brandishing a whip: some sort of dominatrix superhero. While Monks sings about healing someone with a “woman’s touch,” she knows that sometimes, a soft touch won’t cut it. Sometimes, it takes a figurative slap in the face.