2.16.2012
7.20.2011
markus worm storm is short and fat. whatever that means.
Major fucking hard-on material:
✝ DIE ANTWOORD ✝ Fish Paste ✝
✝ DIE ANTWOORD ✝ Wat Pomp ✝
✝ DIE ANTWOORD ✝ Fish Paste ✝
✝ DIE ANTWOORD ✝ Wat Pomp ✝
6.29.2011
get out of the void, sonic warrior.
Bonne journée, all you beautiful losers and cosmic criminals!
Sorta been neglecting this thing lately... I've got a few updates that I'll get around to posting in the next few days I think, but for now... Today, music has been heavy on my mind. "Well, duh. What else is new, ladydude?" Alright, not just music. But the spirit and magnetic energy of music fans. Audiences. Crowds. Music LOVERS. Where o' where... did all the passion go?
I'm going to start this long-winded entry with a live performance by my favourite band, just to jumpstart my brain a little. And hopefully yours too.
Fuck yah! Was it as good for you as it was for me? Alright, now that we're nice and boner'd-up, let's get started, hey?
Fuck yah! Was it as good for you as it was for me? Alright, now that we're nice and boner'd-up, let's get started, hey?
Allow me to share with you a short rant that came from an email exchange I had today with a man-friend of mine... it should give you the sweet n' low down on where this blog entry is going:
"... I get bummed out because it's so rare for punk shows (or any shows, it seems) to really have that sort of spirit and wild abandon any more. The last time I went to a show that was even close to being that sort of experience was when I saw Cursed play at this shitty little bar in ****** probably 3 or 4 years ago, and there were like a gazillion kids crammed in there just going fucking insane... I was photographing the show, so I was right up front to the left, getting my intestines impacted from having ten tonnes of sweaty boy mass pressing up against me as I was steadying myself on a speaker, and I loved every goddamn second of it. Some young kid was gushing blood out of his face and everyone was soaking wet, losing their shirts, flying onto the stage and off and up in the air and back down... man. THAT is why I photograph shows. I want to capture that energy, because that is the feeling that I grew up on, those experiences were my livelihood as a teenager, going to hardcore and punk shows at S**** ***** and the T****** ***** hall... But it's so hard to find anymore. Totally depressing. Music has become such a flailing, interchangeable commodity for most people these days. I don't know where the passion of music lovers went."
*Locations omitted because, well, the internet is fucking creepy, dude.
Not ten years ago (which would have seen me entering my 18th year as a fully-developed zygote), almost every single show I went to, no matter if it was a punk/metal/electro/hip hop/whatever show... almost every single show was enhanced at least 75% by the crowd. Doing what real music-loving crowds do (well... did). Screaming along. Banging into one another. Getting soaked with each others' sweat. Bleeding and puking and falling and moshing and dancing and swaying erratically and headbanging and jumping up and down and hugging/high-fiving strangers (okay so I've never actually seen anyone give a genuine high-five at a show... a girl can dream. Has Bill and/or Ted's superb influence really waned that much, people? I can't get just one sweet, enthusiastic high-five?), whipping their hair around in sweet hair-icopters and waving their hands in the air like they just didn't fucking care and stomping and running around in a big circle and climbing over one another to get within inches of the bands' faces. Letting their love of the music (which is the only thing that really matters in the music industry... at least in my idyllic version of how I think it SHOULD be... I'd make a terrible manager or record exec) free them. And before you ask, nope, not a hippie.
Now what do we have? Self-conscious, self-obsessed, hyper self-aware zombies who are too cool to dance, too cool to have a genuinely good time. Looking each other up and down slyly to see who's hotter or who is wearing a cooler band shirt instead of watching the bands. Watching the entire show through a tiny, pixelated 2x2" SCREEN on their fucking iPhones, removed from the action by way of glowing, ominous, cheap plastic filter. Haphazardly tapping their feet when they remember to, hands in pockets and heads perfectly cocked and predatory lips desperately pursed and hair tediously coiffed. Going to a show barely has anything to do with the music anymore. There has always been a social parade type of angle to going to a show, but it seems that that is literally ALL it is anymore. Just a fashion parade of living, breathing, eye-rolling advertisements unfortunate enough to have been born into or brainwashed by the Generation Web.0 era. I would love to take a bucket full of punk kid sweat, mosh-pit blood, stinky ass socks from the time we braved the torrential downpours at many an outdoor show not giving a fuck about looking like a drowned opossum and your mascara has made its way down to your collarbone and your clothes have become akin to cling wrap but you just didn't give a damn because you were too busy screaming lyrics at the top of your lungs and thrashing your head so hard that you were practically praying to Satan for a massive case of whiplash... I would love to take that bucket and dump it all over the frustratingly bleak collective consciousness (or should I say lack thereof?) of these pseudo-hip, sheepish, bored dumb brain-dead spoon-fed stooges (not the good Stooges, either).
Everything good about what music used to be, from rock n' roll's toddler years up until probably the mid-late 90s (I'm sure that's debatable depending on your frame of reference) has been packaged up in a shiny, stylish box and sold to impressionable, lazy youth who think mp3 files and shows streamed live through a wire connected to a million hard plastic boxes of varying sizes count as some sort of true, collective human experience... sold to them, for the low, low price (which, according to Apple, is at least $300) of, oh... you know, hundreds and hundreds of real moments. Moments of losing control, moments of being slammed up against and sharing a knowing smile with a cute girl with braces and a green mohawk during a particularily high-energy song, moments you spend pouring over album art and lyrics and thank-you notes, moments where you temporarily drift out of reality because your favourite band is playing your favourite song and you just let your body and your feet and your voice take over any other cognitive abilities, all for the sake of the music, for the love of the way it makes you feel.
Music used to be a powerful, key factor in socio-political movements and revolutions (an obvious but very good example would be modern folk music, which was literally born from young people opening their eyes to what was really happening; waking up in a tense, hostile new phase of Western culture and using music to speak out against the things which they had started to criticize and analyze and RESIST). The idea of music as a soundtrack to one's life actually meant something. Now, for the most part, it is just background noise. Roll credits. The message has been watered down and listener apathy has taken over, with those shadow-lurking Agents Of The New Cool infiltrating and controlling the media more than ever before (even in much of what is supposed to be considered "underground" media, they still feed us indie versions of pop stars...) and telling us what we want to hear because it is what they told us we wanted to hear. Oh, there is a quiet revolution - well, resistance is more like it - that's been burning for years, but it's drowned out (but not diminished to those who give a damn) by the cog-churning roar of keyboard clacks, the sterilized hospital-glow of ipod screens, and the enticing virtual reality created by camera phones the size of your palm.
Technology isn't to blame. Because that technology - the painfully-hip gadgets, the 800 versions of the same damn thing, the hot, new and utterly useless grown-up toys - is sold to us by the same industry - or at the very least its close cousin - that is trying, successfully, to pander to our desire for what a very, very Smart Person (if you are one, you know exactly what I mean by that) whom I know theorized brilliantly as "cool capital," and also to our de-evolutionized attention spans.
Don't get me wrong here, peeps: I am the once-very-reluctant owner a 160 gig iPod Classic that I got from a very thoughtful ex-boyfriend two x-mases ago. I can fit almost my entire music collection on that thing. It is a convenience that I would rather not live without after tasting its sweet, sweet nectar. After all, a milk crate full of records weighs what, like, 30 lbs? Ha! Try lugging that around with you everywhere. Now try lugging 20-30 of them. I can fit all of that onto one stupid little machine. It's fucking amazing, to be honest, especially for someone like me, and you, with the obsessive, possessive penchant we have toward music. Technology kinda rules. BUT! I feel like it's blind-siding kids who didn't have the pleasure of growing up putting the needle down in juuuust the right spot to get to that song that you've been dancing to in your head all day long at school; laboriously making mix tapes for each other, each time trying to top the last one; carrying a backpack bursting with cds to their best friend's house. Modern technology is depriving kids of that rite of passage you go through when you have to hide your prized albums with "questionable content" from your parents, or the buzzing anticipation of getting home from the record store and very ritualistically unwrapping your new prize - your prize that you had to WAIT for after hearing the single for months, not having the convenience of instant gratification, - listening to the entire thing front to back at least three times, reading along with every single strategically placed lyric. It's a real fucking shame. I am so grateful that I was born when I was.
Everything now comes in a non-format. A virtually invisible blip of information on a motherboard that gets bounced around from here to there and back again, decreasing in quality and losing the magic. I feel like all music-loving kids born after say, 1990 need to pay their dues. "Paying their dues" isn't even the right term. It's not a chore! Tangible music is wonderful. Why wouldn't you want to have something you can hold onto and grow old with instead of something you can't even see apart from what a computer screen is telling you, let alone hold in your arms and cherish. How can they form a meaningful, long-lasting, life-changing relationship with something that they can't even fucking touch?
Ask any vinylhead and they'll tell that you nothing compares to the warm, crackling, nostalgic, blood sweat and tears sound that a piece of wax emits. I am inclined to agree. Even cds were of far superior sound quality. These kids are legitimately losing out on what makes music so, well, magical, to quote a beardy wizard in a sparkly forest somewhere. They're losing out on the heart & soul of it all, and that bums me out, hard.
Don't get me wrong here, peeps: I am the once-very-reluctant owner a 160 gig iPod Classic that I got from a very thoughtful ex-boyfriend two x-mases ago. I can fit almost my entire music collection on that thing. It is a convenience that I would rather not live without after tasting its sweet, sweet nectar. After all, a milk crate full of records weighs what, like, 30 lbs? Ha! Try lugging that around with you everywhere. Now try lugging 20-30 of them. I can fit all of that onto one stupid little machine. It's fucking amazing, to be honest, especially for someone like me, and you, with the obsessive, possessive penchant we have toward music. Technology kinda rules. BUT! I feel like it's blind-siding kids who didn't have the pleasure of growing up putting the needle down in juuuust the right spot to get to that song that you've been dancing to in your head all day long at school; laboriously making mix tapes for each other, each time trying to top the last one; carrying a backpack bursting with cds to their best friend's house. Modern technology is depriving kids of that rite of passage you go through when you have to hide your prized albums with "questionable content" from your parents, or the buzzing anticipation of getting home from the record store and very ritualistically unwrapping your new prize - your prize that you had to WAIT for after hearing the single for months, not having the convenience of instant gratification, - listening to the entire thing front to back at least three times, reading along with every single strategically placed lyric. It's a real fucking shame. I am so grateful that I was born when I was.
Everything now comes in a non-format. A virtually invisible blip of information on a motherboard that gets bounced around from here to there and back again, decreasing in quality and losing the magic. I feel like all music-loving kids born after say, 1990 need to pay their dues. "Paying their dues" isn't even the right term. It's not a chore! Tangible music is wonderful. Why wouldn't you want to have something you can hold onto and grow old with instead of something you can't even see apart from what a computer screen is telling you, let alone hold in your arms and cherish. How can they form a meaningful, long-lasting, life-changing relationship with something that they can't even fucking touch?
Ask any vinylhead and they'll tell that you nothing compares to the warm, crackling, nostalgic, blood sweat and tears sound that a piece of wax emits. I am inclined to agree. Even cds were of far superior sound quality. These kids are legitimately losing out on what makes music so, well, magical, to quote a beardy wizard in a sparkly forest somewhere. They're losing out on the heart & soul of it all, and that bums me out, hard.
/end crotchety old man-style rant about "kids today..."
 |
| He'll beat your spoiled ass with that cane if you so much as mutter a single unfavourable word about Jimmy Buffet |
***Now back to your regularly scheduled programming... Tonight on "The Real Issue"...***
The questions that have been plaguing my mind today are: Where is the passion? Where is the love? Where are all of the music geeks? The REAL music "fans", in the truest sense of the word... the ones that get it. The ones that want to experience music in the truest sense of the word. The ones who know why their own kind feel exactly the way we do. The ones with real stories of real good times and real people and real battle wounds. WHERE DID YOU GO? Come back! I miss you all. I know you're out there. I know you're just like me. I'm not sure what lame, hyper-veiled version of today's cultural reality we're being forced to live amongst (or more appropriately, live pushing against) these days, but I don't like it one. fucking. bit.
And before you say something hare-brained like "Maybe the problem is that bands aren't exciting anymore, nothing is new, maybe the fans are bored, it was better the first time around, etc."
BULLSHIT. Congratulations, you just graduated from Moron University (honours in dumb-assery?).
i) If you aren't excited by music, by your OWN MUSICAL TASTES that you CHOOSE to listen to (or do you...? I'll rant snarkily about that in a bit)... you aren't fucking listening hard enough, asshole. You aren't DIGGING hard enough. You're lazy and you don't deserve the original first pressing copy of Black Flag's Slip It In that your genuinely awesome-as-fuck older cousin gave you for your birthday because he noticed you wearing a Black Flag pin on your brand new $350 brushed leather jacket from Urban Outfitters at the last family gathering. So, you should probably just give it to me. I will give it a good home. Not that you care.You heartless bastard.
ii-a) The entirety of the music scene (underground and corporate) these days may be eerily reminiscent of a big melting pot simmering in a broth of borrowed sounds and seasoned with re-re-sampled samples (runaway analogy alert), but that doesn't mean there is "nothing new." The newness... the creamy, delicious core of discovering the potential that music truly has... that comes from new generations of music fans experiencing that wonderment of discovering something that is new to THEM. It is entirely an individual experience. There is a veritable treasure chest of music out there spanning hundreds of years, even. You could never get through it all if you lived to be 200. I don't care if you're a 65 year old who lived and breathed Beatlemania in the early 1960s, or a highschool sophomore who just found out who The Clash were last week... as long as your music means something to you, as long as it is new to you, everyone else be damned (I'm talking about you, selected snobby elders, who scoff at the idea of that very 16 year old kid getting into punk rock in an era where you'd observe that "Punk is Dead" - sorry but you'd be wrong, and I hope that kid kicks you in the nuts with his steel-toed boot of anti-facist, fuck-the-establishment fury! Haha, alright alright...). That is the true beauty of music. It will always be there for you, unfettered by a mortal coil. It is the only thing that is truly immortal. It stays with you, like a living creature. It lives on with you, you carry it around with you for life, it soaks up memories and first loves and angry fights and steamy summer nights and self-destructive periods, it IS memories, and it always, always gives back.
***And now for something we hope you'll REALLY like...***
A very important short* story to give you some background on where I'm coming from with all of this :
 |
| Rock n' roll flash cards? |
My dad is one of those rad older dudes (and when I say dudes, I am always being inclusive of my fellow ladydudes), you know the ones... The ones that have seen every amazing show and line-up of bands before your time that you would give your left tit to be able to travel back in time to witness live for yourself; the ones that are a human encyclopedia of music, effortlessly and unselfishly sharing with you their hard-earned street cred and knowledge on everything from Johnny Thunders' real name, to how old Captain Beefheart was when he met Frank Zappa. I've always been a music-obsessed nerd even before I got my first period, all because of my dad.
As we all do, I went through my awkward phases (Kris Kross, Paula Abdul, The Party - anyone remember them?, Korn). Who didn't? It's basically a rite of passage for a typical North American kid. Around age 11, my dad began taking me along to concerts he went to. The first real one I went to (I can't bring myself to count seeing NKOTB with my grandma when I was 7) was Veruca Salt opening for PJ Harvey (and that shitty band Live, but we'll ignore them for the purpose of this blog, and for the purpose of blocking out lame memories). This was right around the time American Thighs came out. Seeing Veruca Salt get up there with their football helmets and their rip-roaring guitars, their "cool older sister who's already been getting head from boys in the back of their first car for 2 years" appeal, and their combination of sugary sweet taunts and screaming like hormonal, 20-something banshees, it changed something in me. I asked (more like pleaded with) my mom for a guitar for my 12th birthday and I haven't looked back (except to grab my beer off of my amp between songs). Witnessing firsthand that performance was my first itchy, enticing taste of what music could really be (that and L7's Hungry For Stink, since I can't overlook the influence that record also had on my "spiritual awakening" ha!). Of the power it wielded. Of the passion it inspired, on both ends of the proverbial stick.
As we all do, I went through my awkward phases (Kris Kross, Paula Abdul, The Party - anyone remember them?, Korn). Who didn't? It's basically a rite of passage for a typical North American kid. Around age 11, my dad began taking me along to concerts he went to. The first real one I went to (I can't bring myself to count seeing NKOTB with my grandma when I was 7) was Veruca Salt opening for PJ Harvey (and that shitty band Live, but we'll ignore them for the purpose of this blog, and for the purpose of blocking out lame memories). This was right around the time American Thighs came out. Seeing Veruca Salt get up there with their football helmets and their rip-roaring guitars, their "cool older sister who's already been getting head from boys in the back of their first car for 2 years" appeal, and their combination of sugary sweet taunts and screaming like hormonal, 20-something banshees, it changed something in me. I asked (more like pleaded with) my mom for a guitar for my 12th birthday and I haven't looked back (except to grab my beer off of my amp between songs). Witnessing firsthand that performance was my first itchy, enticing taste of what music could really be (that and L7's Hungry For Stink, since I can't overlook the influence that record also had on my "spiritual awakening" ha!). Of the power it wielded. Of the passion it inspired, on both ends of the proverbial stick.
(if you're over the age of 25, and didn't live under a euro-dance infested rock in the 90s, you know this song. Probably quite well.)
At 13, my dad started taking me (and my little brother) to an alt-rock festival every summer here in Canada called "Edgefest". (Nothing to do with straight edge, by the way.) It became an annual tradition for the next 6 years or so, among the three of us plus my dad's hetero lifemate, Pete, who was equally as kick ass as my dad. Actually, Pete was even more of a punk than my dad was - he used to make me these amazing mix tapes crammed to the very last millimeter of tape with all kinds of new-to-me punk bands like The Buzzcocks, D.O.A., UK Subs, Sham 69, The Clash, The Vibrators, you get the picture...though I didn't really give the tapes as much of a chance at that point as I did after the pivotal moment I'm about to describe in the next couple of paragraphs - so he had a substantial influence on me during those years as well. Anyway, after that very first Edgefest we went to (which was probably only the third or fourth live concert event I had been to at that point), and experiencing that infectious feeling of being part of a community that were in it together for the sheer love of it all, my now-growing obsession with music, especially LIVE music, was more than just a curiosity. I was hooked. Music became almost like a drug for me. The good kind, not the sketchy, gross kind.
After the VS concert, after that first Edgefest, after developing this new insatiable appetite for MORE MORE MORE of that same feeling, I started really listening to what my dad was listening to... and he was ALWAYS listening to something, something fucking good, whether it be in the car, at the cottage, at a concert that he brought my brother and I along to, street festivals, on a shitty boombox in the backyard while we bbq-ed, when he had his cool friends over who were all just like him and who I looked up to immensely (funny enough, for the past 7 or 8 years of my life I've developed a tendency to gravitate toward befriending men 10-25 years my senior, who are as nerdy about music as my dad and his friends, and, subsequently, as I am now), hanging out at home just playing cards or whatever... there was ALWAYS music. Good music. REAL music. Music that had meaning, power, that satisfaction factor (but at the same time creating an even bigger appetite to be sated). History. Politics (the kind of politics that I could relate to, as a budding young member of the lower-middle class, non-white-washed, angry struggle). Social awareness. Being young and smart and aware but doing stupid things and trying to figure out just what the fuck the point of teenage/young adult life was supposed to be. Rawness. Music that meant something to people. I could tell just by the feeling I got from it. Pops and I started going to flea markets together on Sundays and scouring the record and cd sections for hours, always going home with at least one sparkling gem each. I would just buy random cds sometimes, just because I was curious to see what I would find and what I would feel if I just listened with an open mind. Other peoples' trash became my badges of honour that I collected more proudly than anything else I had ever done anything in my entire life.
Then came the life-altering crux.
One September afternoon many, many moons ago (ha), my dad played The Dictators' Blood Brothers (1978) for me. I remember every single thing about that afternoon. The smell of the air, the weather outside, the clothes I was wearing, where we were going, the feeling of the sparks in my brain that were popping as I listened deeper and deeper... We were driving around in his old, ugly, brown ocean liner masquerading as a wood-panelled station wagon that had probably the worst speakers on earth (but at least they were LOUD), and I couldn't have been a day over my sweet 16. I had been getting mildly interested in more and more of his type of stuff - stuff which I would later became completely enthralled by and obsessed with... 70s punk rock, proto-punk, old rock n' roll, blues, guitar-driven noise - but barely paid much mind to it at the time since I was 15/16 years old, still in the process of figuring out which music spoke to me the most. And so, I remember him saying "Alright kid, I'm going to put on some Dictators for you. I bet you'll really like this. Ready?"
Out of the shitty-but-loud Jurassic-aged speakers ... a muffled but deliberate war cry, "1, 2, 3, 4!"... a steady, heart-hammering drum beat that sounded something like a machine gun gone berserk, and then... a schizophrenic metallic guitar riff going off in spurts like a roman candle fight. It was rebellious, bratty, defiant, unpredictable, discordant... and most importantly, Dear diary, the most pleasing sound that I had ever fucking heard in my until then pathetic, maggoty, pointless existence!!! Fifteen seconds later, the song just exploded into one frantic, snarling, deliciously messy firecracker, but also seemed to crash into itself and come together (I was discovering for the first time that punk rock sure was a world of crazy sonic paradoxes) and didn't let go of the bear-trap hold it had on my proverbial balls until almost 3 minutes later after a fake-out ending. Handsome Dick Manitoba had burst in with lyrics that, depending on your take, were either sarcastically blasting hot-headed, pink-bellied over-coddled rock stars; or, alternately, asserting his intentions to rip the NYC scene a new asshole from a snotty first person perspective. (As I write this, I'm realizing the connection between this song and the subjects I'm touching on here. That's some juicy personal evolution salad on this here table, folks. Just kidding, I've got way juicier stuff than that. That was actually more like a 2 out of 10 on the International Juicy Scale.) Those 3 minutes were my first true musical orgasm (even down to the last little spurt of rock!), but *cue dramatic voice-over* it wouldn't be my last.
One September afternoon many, many moons ago (ha), my dad played The Dictators' Blood Brothers (1978) for me. I remember every single thing about that afternoon. The smell of the air, the weather outside, the clothes I was wearing, where we were going, the feeling of the sparks in my brain that were popping as I listened deeper and deeper... We were driving around in his old, ugly, brown ocean liner masquerading as a wood-panelled station wagon that had probably the worst speakers on earth (but at least they were LOUD), and I couldn't have been a day over my sweet 16. I had been getting mildly interested in more and more of his type of stuff - stuff which I would later became completely enthralled by and obsessed with... 70s punk rock, proto-punk, old rock n' roll, blues, guitar-driven noise - but barely paid much mind to it at the time since I was 15/16 years old, still in the process of figuring out which music spoke to me the most. And so, I remember him saying "Alright kid, I'm going to put on some Dictators for you. I bet you'll really like this. Ready?"
Out of the shitty-but-loud Jurassic-aged speakers ... a muffled but deliberate war cry, "1, 2, 3, 4!"... a steady, heart-hammering drum beat that sounded something like a machine gun gone berserk, and then... a schizophrenic metallic guitar riff going off in spurts like a roman candle fight. It was rebellious, bratty, defiant, unpredictable, discordant... and most importantly, Dear diary, the most pleasing sound that I had ever fucking heard in my until then pathetic, maggoty, pointless existence!!! Fifteen seconds later, the song just exploded into one frantic, snarling, deliciously messy firecracker, but also seemed to crash into itself and come together (I was discovering for the first time that punk rock sure was a world of crazy sonic paradoxes) and didn't let go of the bear-trap hold it had on my proverbial balls until almost 3 minutes later after a fake-out ending. Handsome Dick Manitoba had burst in with lyrics that, depending on your take, were either sarcastically blasting hot-headed, pink-bellied over-coddled rock stars; or, alternately, asserting his intentions to rip the NYC scene a new asshole from a snotty first person perspective. (As I write this, I'm realizing the connection between this song and the subjects I'm touching on here. That's some juicy personal evolution salad on this here table, folks. Just kidding, I've got way juicier stuff than that. That was actually more like a 2 out of 10 on the International Juicy Scale.) Those 3 minutes were my first true musical orgasm (even down to the last little spurt of rock!), but *cue dramatic voice-over* it wouldn't be my last.
From the opening assault of "Faster and Louder," it was like the rock n' roll gods dropped the A-bomb on my head. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. These guys were FOR REAL. My eyes must have been as wide as a 12". I'm not sure I blinked once throughout the whole song. Or the next song. Or the next. That was the day I sold my soul to rock and roll, took the spade the Devil handed me, and started digging deeper and deeper down my own musical path, wondering what other hedonistic explosions of sound lay waiting for me in some dusty, forsaken milk crate or cardboard box.
And I hope that if I ever have a kid (not very likely, but hey, shit happens), we'll share the same type of incredible bond that my dad and I shared for most of my young life, all in the name of rock and roll.
As an endnote to that story, my dad ended up giving me a metric shit-tonne of super duper old vinyl when I was about 18 or so, and the glorious goodies contained within were each like flat, shiny, grooved smiles from one thousand of the happiest, rocking-est unicorns that you can even imagine. The highlight of which is my almost complete (minus I think two albums), mostly first-pressing Judas Priest discography. I love you Dad.
And I hope that if I ever have a kid (not very likely, but hey, shit happens), we'll share the same type of incredible bond that my dad and I shared for most of my young life, all in the name of rock and roll.
As an endnote to that story, my dad ended up giving me a metric shit-tonne of super duper old vinyl when I was about 18 or so, and the glorious goodies contained within were each like flat, shiny, grooved smiles from one thousand of the happiest, rocking-est unicorns that you can even imagine. The highlight of which is my almost complete (minus I think two albums), mostly first-pressing Judas Priest discography. I love you Dad.
(*Okay so that wasn't such a "short story" after all. S my D.)
ii-b) Yeah, there are a lot of bands blatantly just ripping off the Velvet Underground/The Stooges/Gang of Four/(insert any awesome-seminal-band-from-any-previous-decade-and-any-previous-scene here)/any combination of multiple big players and gaining a 15-minutes-of-fame token to put on the shelf of their studio apartment, but guess what, man? There are tons of bands/acts out there who are super fresh, super inspiring, super inspired, and super GOOD. You just have to get off your fucking ass and find the stuff that makes your dick stand up straight and go from zero to raging hard-on in the time it takes to strum three chords; the stuff that speaks to you on the most intimate, personal, raw level; whether you want something to cushion your feelings of depression, help you exorcise pent-up anger, make you feel happy and glowing in the most human way possible, or challenge you to question authority and give you the guts to stand up for your rights and stick up for the little guys; the stuff that makes you immerse yourself so whole-heartedly in what is being blasted into your ears that for half an hour/45 minutes of your life, nothing else even exists but you and the relationship you've created with this projection of your own desires and feelings. Or, plain and simple, just rips your fucking face off in the most violent, brain-banging way. Go to the closest indie record store you know of and pour over the boxes and boxes of vinyl and cds. Go, now! Forget about the rest of this blog post; it's a pissed-off smattered mess anyway. More important things you have to do, young Jedi. Buy records you've never heard of, because you like the name of the band, or the cover art, or just out of sheer perversity and curiosity. Buy records by bands that are associated with other bands you love. Buy records that the hopefully non-douchey clerk recommends based on what type of shit you're into. TRADE records. With friends, your sister, your brother, your fucking DAD. Just dig. Learn to love music based on what you figure out for yourself through trial and error and keeping an open mind, not based on what magazines, charts, music channels, the motherfucking conglomerate radio stations, beat over your head like a boring-ass broken Supertramp record.
ii-b) Yeah, there are a lot of bands blatantly just ripping off the Velvet Underground/The Stooges/Gang of Four/(insert any awesome-seminal-band-from-any-previous-decade-and-any-previous-scene here)/any combination of multiple big players and gaining a 15-minutes-of-fame token to put on the shelf of their studio apartment, but guess what, man? There are tons of bands/acts out there who are super fresh, super inspiring, super inspired, and super GOOD. You just have to get off your fucking ass and find the stuff that makes your dick stand up straight and go from zero to raging hard-on in the time it takes to strum three chords; the stuff that speaks to you on the most intimate, personal, raw level; whether you want something to cushion your feelings of depression, help you exorcise pent-up anger, make you feel happy and glowing in the most human way possible, or challenge you to question authority and give you the guts to stand up for your rights and stick up for the little guys; the stuff that makes you immerse yourself so whole-heartedly in what is being blasted into your ears that for half an hour/45 minutes of your life, nothing else even exists but you and the relationship you've created with this projection of your own desires and feelings. Or, plain and simple, just rips your fucking face off in the most violent, brain-banging way. Go to the closest indie record store you know of and pour over the boxes and boxes of vinyl and cds. Go, now! Forget about the rest of this blog post; it's a pissed-off smattered mess anyway. More important things you have to do, young Jedi. Buy records you've never heard of, because you like the name of the band, or the cover art, or just out of sheer perversity and curiosity. Buy records by bands that are associated with other bands you love. Buy records that the hopefully non-douchey clerk recommends based on what type of shit you're into. TRADE records. With friends, your sister, your brother, your fucking DAD. Just dig. Learn to love music based on what you figure out for yourself through trial and error and keeping an open mind, not based on what magazines, charts, music channels, the motherfucking conglomerate radio stations, beat over your head like a boring-ass broken Supertramp record.
 |
| I couldn't find a picture that properly conveyed the sentiment I reserve for Supertramp, so here is a two-headed donkey. |
It always makes me laugh when I read about how "the young people are the ones dictating what's 'cool'/what's on trend/what's popular." Just as pretentious gay men with absolutely no idea what actually looks good on regular women, or who insist on using dangerously underweight models to display their clothing on like wire coat hangers definitely don't control the direction and overall warped influence of the fashion industry on the minds of impressionable, insecure women young and old... middle-aged, conservative, bourgeois white male capitalist tycoons definitely don't feed and sustain the popular music industry with their dollars and nonsense, and they most certainly are NOT using corporate ninja techniques to delude young people into thinking they are the ones blazing some sort of (continuously diluted and deluded) cultural trail.
Oh okay then.
Errrm, I guess the moral of this story (although I do have questionable morals) is... maybe the reason I'm so fucking disappointed and frustrated by the audiences at most shows these days, the zombie drones with their camera phones and disposable tastes, the perpetually bored, toe-tapping mannequins whose ability to feel any emotion beyond feigned interest, insecurity-laden false superiority complexes or the subconsciously programmed desire to devour n' move on-to-the-next-thing, I am pretty skeptical of... Maybe the reason for all of it, is because this generation has been unfairly deprived of that tangible connection with the music they're constantly consuming and spitting out, ON TOP OF being bombarded more heavily than ever by a virtual tennis ball machine, shooting the new shit (and I do mean shit, literally; as if I even had to say it...) straight at the bulls-eyes on their foreheads in a constant stream of, essentially, ADHD-inducing projectile vomit. Having to wade further and further through the dark, murky, soul-sucking waters of the corporate and mass media strong-hold just to get to the light on the other side of the trenches is no match for how dully these kids have already been ground-down by that very same enemy... Make 'em weak and lazy, make 'em stop caring, and then we strike! Headed fang-first for every worthless penny in their brand-new pockets.
Oh okay then.
Errrm, I guess the moral of this story (although I do have questionable morals) is... maybe the reason I'm so fucking disappointed and frustrated by the audiences at most shows these days, the zombie drones with their camera phones and disposable tastes, the perpetually bored, toe-tapping mannequins whose ability to feel any emotion beyond feigned interest, insecurity-laden false superiority complexes or the subconsciously programmed desire to devour n' move on-to-the-next-thing, I am pretty skeptical of... Maybe the reason for all of it, is because this generation has been unfairly deprived of that tangible connection with the music they're constantly consuming and spitting out, ON TOP OF being bombarded more heavily than ever by a virtual tennis ball machine, shooting the new shit (and I do mean shit, literally; as if I even had to say it...) straight at the bulls-eyes on their foreheads in a constant stream of, essentially, ADHD-inducing projectile vomit. Having to wade further and further through the dark, murky, soul-sucking waters of the corporate and mass media strong-hold just to get to the light on the other side of the trenches is no match for how dully these kids have already been ground-down by that very same enemy... Make 'em weak and lazy, make 'em stop caring, and then we strike! Headed fang-first for every worthless penny in their brand-new pockets.
It's like a bloated, rotten, layered cake of shit upon shit upon even runnier, more disgusting, painful, piss-out-your-ass shit. Where there was once - and for so long - a common, passionate connection, community and intimate bond between music and music fan, there is now a dull, yet gnawing, ever-growing void. No wonder 95% of kids at any given show on any given night are barely interacting in any sort of real way with their surroundings. For all they care, they might as well be at home listening to the same music through a tv set. People thought the 90s were the apathetic years, but it was padded with a hefty dose of cynicism. Now things are even more dire... there's just a thinly cultivated ironic sense of humour about it all. Cynicism is healthier. It teaches you to be critical. Irony just throws a bright yellow gem sweater over the problem.
Far be it from me to forget to point at least a pinky finger at the guilty bands, too. Apathy and disconnect and just going through the motions breeds apathetic, disconnected culture-killing dickheads who are just going through the motions. Speaking as a musician, but moreso as a FAN... I wish more bands were still in it for the right reasons. The relationship between creator and consumer doesn't have to be capitalistic, so severely unbalanced or tainted by hierarchy. It should be give and take, a beautiful, shared moment in time as we drift through this horrible phase of civilization. Or slide in, pull out, repeat until... ahhhh, satisfaction.
RANTING ASIDE...
To the golden 5%: You are my torch-receiving heroes. Don't let the fucking zombies win. And don't let the zombie-makers win. Feel your passion for music as deeply and as powerfully as you need to, and in any way that you want to, in whatever way, shape or form is meaningful to you, as long as you feel it with conviction.
If there is one piece of advice that I feel is my wisest and truest lesson to impart - and which has made me into a person who I can safely say has an ample amount of self-respect, years of critical self-reflection and social cynicism under her belt, and is truly a finely-tuned product of her own experiences for being a humble 27 years old - it's very simple, very true, and it's this: never give a fuck what anyone else thinks. You'll be a better person for it (in fact, I'm sure you already are).
To the golden 5%: You are my torch-receiving heroes. Don't let the fucking zombies win. And don't let the zombie-makers win. Feel your passion for music as deeply and as powerfully as you need to, and in any way that you want to, in whatever way, shape or form is meaningful to you, as long as you feel it with conviction.
If there is one piece of advice that I feel is my wisest and truest lesson to impart - and which has made me into a person who I can safely say has an ample amount of self-respect, years of critical self-reflection and social cynicism under her belt, and is truly a finely-tuned product of her own experiences for being a humble 27 years old - it's very simple, very true, and it's this: never give a fuck what anyone else thinks. You'll be a better person for it (in fact, I'm sure you already are).
Here is some eye and ear candy for you, since I love you so much.
Even if you disagree with what I've said here, I hope my crusty, insomnia-induced rant was at least entertaining in some way.
And hey, if you're one of these hipster culture zombies whose eyes I'm trying to smack the lifeless, glazed-over look out of, at least you'll appreciate the thick, creamy irony of me writing these words in a blog instead of a zine or a some other such prehistoric form of fan-dom. Now shut the fuck up and seriously, go listen to everything ever recorded by MC5 non-stop for a month. That oughta set your head straight, you smarmy little prick.
LC
 |
| Rockin' the party since '83. |
***
This post is dedicated to the late, inimitable, irreplaceable Imants Krumins, the biggest, sweetest, realest, most enthusiastic and down-to-earth punk rock fanatic I've ever met, that's for goddamn sure;
And also, of course, to my dad who is still totally my hero in so many ways, and who is the reason that literally my entire life revolves around my involvement with and undying love for music. ♥
***
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
