Conflict (issue 53)

CONFLICT 53

A FREE PUBLICATION FROM YOUR CLOSE FRIENDS AT CUMBUCKET MEDIA : MORE VENAL THAN BUZZMEDIA SINCE 2003

SXSWZZZ BONER EDITION

MARCH 2013

What's a little 22 years between issues? Lots of great artists take their time. Tom Scholz. Blancmange.

Terrence Malick. But none of those lightweights had to reemerge in a medium filled with such heavy hitters as the guy from the Long Winters dissing punk (next we'll learn that Dishwalla no longer believe in anarchy). NO BIG DEAL. I'm up to the challenge, even if this is just a oneoff. It's a lot of effort just to gain media credentials to the Austin Psych Fest, but anything's better than giving those creeps money.

By Gerard Cosloy Over the course of 52 issues (1979-1991, with a sight hiatus in the mid-'80's), Conflict was one of the most overrated fanzines of the era. Sure, there were funny moments here & there (over the final dozen of so issues at least), but the early years were mostly typified by horrible writing and lousy taste. There were slight improvements towards the end,, but none of it was helped by a generally bullying tone and a penchant for petty vendettas.

It is my fervent hope that with this possibly (HOPEFULLY) final issue, Conflict will experience some measure of redemption. Never again will I use the printed word as a mallet with which to smite enemies real and imagined. From this day forward, I'm all about togetherness, understanding and trying to foster a sense of community, rather than knee-jerk elitism and ironic distance. It would take someone or something truly despicable to ruin my glowing mood and feelings of genuine optimism for this city and it's vibrant music scene. Fortunately for you, there's several someones or somethings, otherwise this pamphlet would already be more boring than reading The Deli Austin.

Apologies if you've already read me saying as much elsewhere, but could someone please lock the persons responsible for The Deli Austin, Do512 and SonicVaultAustin in some storage POD? At least one until one of them comes up with a single interesting idea?

Look, I've no qualms with entrepreneurs ,

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but only if they fill a niche beyond being a suckier version of something else that sucks.

Selling heroin to schoolkids is more dignified (and less destructive) than the digital garbage pile these jerks are responsible for.

Let's segue from that unfortunate local business to a matter of a greater international concern --- namely, Spray Paint's self-titled debut album. I've been out of the rock critic game for a while, admittedly, but to these damaged ears, the trio's high-treble histrionics could well be the glue that binds pre-Warners Devo to the Urinals (which you must admit, would only be slightly more awkward than gluing Devo to an actual urinal). A few have opined the album isn't quite as explosive as Spray Paint's live show, but if it were, would the Austin trio really be wise to torpedo one big revenue stream simply to move a few hundred LP's? I don't expect most of you numbskulls to really follow what I'm saying here, so let me put it in terms even the slowest among you can understand : WHY SELL THE MILK WHEN YOU CAN RENT PARTS OF THE COW? It's Economics 101.

Alas, that's not the end of the discussion where Spray Paint are concerned.

Recenly, a NY based reviewer (OK, Long Island City) treated his readers to a rather lengthy exposition concerning his contentious relationship with the band's Sacramento-based record label. I'm sure we can all agree there are almost no other burning topics the general public is nearly as interested in as whether or not a record label has or has not snubbed a blogger.

Except perhaps, for the burning issue of playing fast and loose with symbolism that evokes some of history's darkest chapters.

While the critic was happy to share his

dispute with the label in question, he's got little to say about the company being named SS Records. Yes, I know the propreitor's name is Scott Soriano (though we've not actually seen a birth certificate) but given the rise of the far right in this country, it seems the very least a music journalist with a social conscience could do would be to ask "HEY, WHAT'S UP WITH THIS SS STUFF?" And since my own social conscience is even bigger than my love for kitty kats, I have asked that very question in the form of a spraypainted message (get it?) on the side of Spray Paint's van. At least I think it was their van. Many of these vehicles look the same in the Trailer Space parking lot late at night.

Anyhow, enjoy the new issue (or what little of it there is) If you'd like to order copies of old editions, please understand that none are available (and I would sooner sell heroin to your children). If you must spend money (on something you can flip on eBay) this week, please purchase Spray Paint's album instead (SS, 1809 S Street Sacramento, CA 95811 USA, s-srecords.com).

Catch you again in 22 years!

www.cantstopthebleeding.com

turn the cheek when artists are willing to

discuss these issues.”

At the risk of channeling Roberto Duran (or a sports blog of the same name), I've got to say NO MAAS to this line of (ahem) reasoning. Hard to say which is more pathetic, that this doofus believes he's actually Destruction Unit - Void addressing an issue or that whatever's left of the music press (Jolly Dream LP) publishes such dunderheaded The most accurate interpretation thus statements without blinking. And far of the malevolent intent and sensory HOW PRESCIENT of the Black overload that is D.U.s live show. You're Angels to pen such a biting piece of less likely to contend with any low-level social commentary, "just days explosives during the home listening before" the shootings in Aurora experience, but it's not my place to (and, if you take the hint, "just guess. Maybe you're in a warzone. months" before further killing in Maybe you're a former member of Connecticut).

Warzone. If that's the case, my claims of this album's apocalyptic qualities probably seem a little trite, after all the intense stuff you've been thru, Rocky Bleier. Either way, this is a an album of the year front-runner, and I imagine many of the people reading this are front-runners themselves. (jollydreamrecords.bigcartel.com) The Black Angels - Indigo Meadow CD (Blue Horizon) The simpletons who comprise this band's audience long ago demonstrated they'll either fall for anything or don't possess the faculties to tell the difference between garbage and music with an ounce of originality. But that said, is there justification for using the slaughter of innocents as a cheap fucking marketing ploy for a record that makes Billy Idol seem punk by comparison?

Consider the following press release ; "Written just days before last year’s mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, lead single “Don’t Play With Guns” balances explosive guitars and blown-out vocals with a truly succinct statement regarding the ugly issue of gun control.

“Our music has always tried to shed light on issues that may be hard to deal with or confront,” singer/guitarist Alex Maas explains. “In ‘Don’t Play With Guns’ the antagonist is a female who has the power of persuasion over a man. Substitute the female antagonist with a Nation, substitute the manipulated man with yourself. If people think they can ignore the issues, they are wrong.

Don’t play with guns, don’t touch a hot stove, don’t give your child a poisonous snake, don’t

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probably on the middle of the bill underneath a succession of zero talents. (www.hbsp.-2x.com)

Wet Lungs - s/t EP (Twistworthy 7") I'm gonna tread very lightly here as this band features a man-mountain vocalist who looks like he'd have zero difficulty snapping my spine like a fucking toothpick if I had the temerity to suggest this was anything short of an absolutely brilliant debut.

I recently saw these guys entertain an especially stupid crowd of tourists at Red 7 who thought Free Week was some kind of invitation to gawk at the animals and perform their own personal reenactment of the Quincy punk episode.

Given that their hearts are in the right place when it comes to our fragile society and our need to be told not to play with gunz, I have struggled to think of one nice thing to say about The Black Angels. The best I can come up with is that it cannot be very easy to make the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club seem like they're only the 2nd shittiest band in the entire world. (home.nra.org)

Lorelle Meets The Obsolete - Corruptible Faces (Captcha LP) Huge props to their label dude for having the remarkable restraint & good taste not to print a huge sticker reading, "blows the new MBV album out of the water" . Look for this remarkable duo to hit an Austin Psych Fest in 2015 or 16,

Alas, there were no ice-picks and and there was no kindly Jack Klugman to pick up the pieces, but despite the throughly rotten atmosphere, these guys generate a genuinely hateful/ugly racket sans a bassist (grindtastic guitarist coupled w/ overplaying-in-the-rightways Gabe from The Locust, plus the aforementioned fella on the microphone, who hopefully hasn't combed the city's electoral rolls looking for my home address). The only thing I dislike about this EP is that I wish there was a lot more of it. If you know someone who owns a lot of really bad records on the Ipecac label (sorry if that was redundant), be a sport and break into his or her home and replace that crap with this instead. Why doesn't the Foundation For A Better American make suggestions like this? (www.twistworthy.com )

his own body of work (the good stuff, anyway).

However, for all his contributions to art, Ned suffered the gift horse of Superchunk covering one of his best known songs and then being written out of the history books by the envious and insecure. If only someone could invent some sort of computerized medium where a truth-teller could set the story straight.

Though you'll have to do your own happy hunting until that day arrives (do I look like a lending library?), Total Punk has committed "Miserable Life" from the 'Quit While You're Ahead' CD compendium to vinyl for the first time, coupled with a previously unreleased Action Swingers tune from the wayback machine --- both measure up pretty well compared to "Kicked In Head" Action Swingers - "Miserable Life" b/w "Losing or "Bum My Trip", and that's pretty hard to pull off in My Cool" (Total Punk) any era. There's a lot of records-are-the-new-coffeetable-books vault plundering happening these days (not There's no hard evidence available that Jon Wurster & to mention the coffee table books about records) and Tom Scharpling's "The Music Scholar" was directly thankfully this runs contrary to that popular pattern. I'll inspired by former NY Mayor Ned Hayden, though refrain from mentioning the all-star lineup involved there's a number of uncanny parallels (the bit about because things are starfucky enough around town this Wurster's character discovering Fred Durst late in life week as is and I don't wanna encourage that sort of excepted). There's no shortage of pivotal moments in thing., but surely the Peter Saville sleeve design counts rock history that Hayden's witnessed (in some cases as a major selling point (www.floridasdying.com) from feet or inches away), and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the more primal bits have informed

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Sleaze - s/t (Sing Sing) Folks far and wide (and near and tall) have been losing their minds over Sing Sing's exceptionally well packaged reissue of Coloured Balls' 'Ball Power', but you'll deeply regret missing the boat on the label's 5 song 12" from TV Smith's pre-Adverts quartet, Sleaze.

Characterized by Smith as "a crossover between glam à la Bowie or Cockney Rebel and prog bands like Genesis or Van Der Graaf Generator", Sleaze failed to set England's West Coast Glam/Prog crossover scene on fire, though that might've had something to do with a) there not being much of a glam/prog crossover crowd in that neck of the woods at the time or b) the original EP being limited to 50 copies. The incongruity/futility of Sleaze striking a menacing tone in the region is nicely illustrated with an inner sleeve pic of the fearsome foursome brandishing dripping 99 Flake Cones at the seaside. About a year after this gem was recorded, the band's peculiar hybrid was even less than in vogue than it was before (which is to say, not at all) . Impossible to play this without wondering what an ongoing Sleaze would've morphed into. (singsingrecords.com)

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AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS SXSW 2013 3/13 - BUFALO BOB'S CHALUPAS (NOON) 3/14 - HIGHLAND MALL FOOD COURT (1PM, W/ LAFF RIOT CUMPANY, AN ACOUSTIC TRIBUTE TO QUIET COMPANY) 3/14 - RADIO SHACK (OLTORF/SO. CONGRESS, 4PM) 3/15 - ROUND ROCK OUTLET SHOPS, PARKING LOT (NOON) 3/15 - THAI NOODLE HOUSE, FESTIVAL OF UNDERSTANDING, 5PM 3/16 - PAULA DEAN's PUNK PICNIC (w/ UME, ELO II, AND MANITIALS, AN ACOUSTIC TRIBUTE TO COMPLETE) 3/17 - SHORELINE CHURCH (w/ WHITEHOUSE AND SPERM REGRET, AN ACOUSTIC TRIBUTE TO LAFF RIOT CUMPANY)

Mini Beast - Look Don't Look (Presco Records)

Meat Mist - Smut (XO Press LP) We're living in a totally great age (for music, anyway) when a bunch of guys nowhere near old enough to know or care what I'm referring to can release an album every bit as unpleasant and oozing with negativity as such landmarks as 'Filth' or 'Monticello' and somehow make it an artifice-free experience. As opposed to an Arty Face Experience (or if you prefer, an Artie Lange Face Experience) which almost certainly would be kind of awful.

These Kansas City fellas have stumbled through Austin twice in the past 8 months and while they've been no less pummeling onstage, the trio rock hard enough that it might function as genuine entertainment if you could tune out the monumentally grim subject matter. No such luck on 'Smut' ; there may be no "I" in "team", but there's most assuredly a "me" in "monochrome". There's a "rome", too, but that doesn't really make my point. Anyhow, great album, great band. The next person who calls them onedimensional gets to fight me (or the proxy of my choosing if the challenger is younger than 85 or older than 7) 5 (meatmist.bandcamp.com)

Mission Of Burma drummer/ vocalist Peter Prescott has achieved some measure of postBurma recognition, what with Merge's Volcano Suns reissues and The Molls' "Is Chesty Dead?" topping the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" and Aerosmith's "Dream On" in a recent Massachusetts legislature vote to determine the official state song (sadly, the Sickness' "Regurgitation" finished a very distant 4th).

Still, there's parts of Prescott's ouevre as a songwriter/ composer that have gone unnoticed by revisionist historians, and while we await Numero's Kustomized/Peer Group box (scheduled for the year 2030), we'll have to be satisfied with Pete's self-issued

Exhaustion - Future Eaters (Aarght LP) No one ought to be allowed to coast on lineage, not even a trio comprised of persons who've logged time in Deaf Wish, Ooga Boogas and Snawklor. Instead they're like music's ANTI MARVIS FRAZIER, something as corroded and lurchtastic as any offering from whatever town you care to mention.

Melbourne's Exhaustion have checked in with a tremendous debut, and as much as I'm tempted to call these heavy jams, "expansive", such words are better applied to eating sponges and finding out what happens a few days later. Instead, I'd rather sit back and imagine an evening in the not-so-distant future when these guys and (either lineup of) James Arthur's Manhunt are sharing a stage.

I don't mean one supporting the other, either. There's no reason both couldn't function really well playing at the same time. Almost

solo debut. Prescott's legion of admirers have long wondered, would such an album be closer to 100% of modern rock audiences Eno's 'Here Come The Warm Jets' or Peter Allan's, 'Bi-Costal'?

My own guess would've been, "why choose?", but 'Mini-Beast' is a more a experimental, sometimes soundscape-y/ scrape-y work than you might've expected. There's only a few hundred of these clear-viny masterpieces ; there's only one Peter Prescott. The former is for sale, and perhaps the latter, too, if you're prepared to pay THE ULTIMATE PRICE. (minibeast.net)

suffer from some form of ADD and it's about time today's artists acknowledge this condition by embracing a non-traditional presentation. On my very first trip to Austin, I saw Meat Truck and some long-forgotten power electronics duo go balls to the wall at a Zendek Farms hayride and have waited ever since for two equally couragous bands to attempt something similar. (aarghtrecords.com)

THE GODLIKE GENIUS OF MEREDITH BAXTER BIRNEY

By YOUR EDITOR

Chances are high you most commonly associate thespian powerhouse Meredith Baxter Birney as the matriarch of the Keaton clan in the inexplicably popular & long-running "Family Ties". Or perhaps those of a more recent vintage remember unexceptional cameos on "Cold Case" or "Spin City" . Either way, you might be blissfuly unaware of her uncanny knack for ending in up some of the most iconoclastic made-for-TV movies of the prior generation.

Under most circumstances, I'd not contemplate watching a film whose central charater had an eating disorder (except perhaps for cannibalism). But MBB's off-thecharts performance as a pressured homemaker-turned-bulimic basketcase in "Kate's Secret" is one for the ages . It's hard to inject much subtlety into a part that requires the lead actress to shove copious amounts of cake, cookies, pies, burgers, chalupas, hot fudge sundaes, eclairs, lobster rolls, gyros etc. into her mouth prior to projectile vomiting, but goddman if Baxter-Birney doesn't lend genuine pathos and sensitivity to a film that would otherwise be a creepy exercise in exploitation (bonus points for Ed Asner, chewing out her asshole husband, mustering the

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sort of invective he usually saved up for Ted Knight.)

Office Of Film & TV notes his character "learns a hard lesson the worst imaginable way In 1988, at the height of her "Family possible...Beck comes full circle and Ties" fame, Birney starred with the film ends with the police officer mega-depressing TV fixture David delivering a victim sensitivity speech Morse in "Winnie" the tale of two to a classroom full of rookie cops. intellectually disabled adults who fall Hooray!" No mention of the Uin love and run Men songs on the soundtrack, but away from their oppressors. Wrote hey, not everyone's a student of the the Chicago Tribune's Clifford details like me.

Terry, Birney was "made up to look almost unrecognizable...she takes In short, Meredith Baxter Birney on protruding teeth, drabby is all kinds of awesome. She's dresses, clunky shoes and a roughmade unconventional career hewn New York accent." Hey, you choices, embraced the kind of had me at drabby dresses! parts that make us reconsider

the world beyond our own little Though mostly forgotten by TV box, and broken ground for a historians, "Winnie" - a more (?) succession of far less talented artful take on the Richard Thomas/ performers. In another era, Julie Kavner vehicle, "No Other perhaps she could've worked Love", most certainly paved the way with a more innovative director, for the Juliette Lewis/Giovanni Ribisi like say, Harmony Korine or saga "The Other Sister", which to Renny Harlin. Instead, she made this day remains the most the most of the material at her commercially successful film ever disposal and routinely delivered made about intellectually disabled the goods, BIG TIME. I know adults who want to fuck. there are some who will declare Valerie Bertenelli Tops Of The While the majority of MBB acolytes Lifetime Pile, but MBB dove would rank her star turn as a batshit headfirst into all sorts of childnapper in 1990's "The Kissing cringeworthy scenarios long Place" as one of her most notable before Lifetime was a genre onto efforts, I will instead opt for her itself. She remains a singularly supporting role in 1985's "The Rape classy and exceptional artist and Of Richard Beck." (retitled "Deadly everyone reading this should Justice" for the video market). A thank her for years of devotion young (well, mid 30s) Richard to her craft.

Crenna plays a cynical detective who routinely treats rape victims Or you can just FedEx David with the sneering, "well, what were Birney a box of dogshit. That'll you wearing?" attitude typical of the mean just as much. era. That is, until he's sexually assaulted by a gang of burly sadists who promise to make him "squeal like a pig". KARMA'S A BITCH...and so was Richard Crenna in this untraditional, if somewhat hamfisted (sorry) movie .

Crenna won a Emmy for this, and some smart aleck at the the Seattle

Una Noche De dealmaking En el espacio de remolque

la segunda parte Sweet Talk Unholy Two G.Green Obnox Burnt Skull

Saturday March 16 7pm 1401-A Rosewood Ave

Sainte Anthony's Fyre - s/t (Zonk)

Justice Yeldham - 'Popped In The Head All The Time Now' (Feeding Tube LP) Played this one a couple of times prior to reading any background material on Yeldham and assumed --- after hearing what seemed like an unjointed, Sharrock/ Borbetomagus-ian assault that made the morning's caffeine totally unneccesary --- I was contending with some sort of evil avant virtuoso playing a stringed instrument, or perhaps an EFX-drenched horn of some type.

So it turns out I was wrong on both counts. Yeldham's a glass blower, and not the kind you're (probably) familiar with. Contact mics are attached to shards of glass while Yeldham puts his lips on the surface and blows that shit to smithereens. It that sounds like a gimmick to you, I'll have to trust that everything you've ever done in your life is the very definition of substantial. Sick sick sick record, no less so upon learning how it was made. (feedingtuberecords.com)

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Ferocious, sludgeworthy in the right spots, grade-A hard rocker stuff from Trenton, NJ, circa 1970.

Technically, that's close enough to Philly to kill any talk of their role in Jersey Psych History, but not south enough to knock Bobby Ebz out of the Garden State Hall Of Fame. GEOGRAPHY SUCKS (rockadrome.com) Hank IV - "Depravity's Rainbow" b/w "Your Mind Is A Disco" 7" (Holy Mountain)

A couple of years ago I told an unintiated friend this quartet was the best old guy band in America.

After hearing this juggernaut double-fuckin'-A side benefit for drummer Scott Jones' medical bills, I have to reconsider the qualification. Who says they're not the best old girl band, too? (hankiv.com, holymountain.com)

FROM THE DESK OF RANDY L : Still, these dogs are unfailingly sweet and loyal. They've never announced in the middle of a World Series that they're opting out of a contract because their contract with me is FOR LIFE. None of my

(EDITOR'S NOTE : famed Baseball executive / CONSUMER RIGHTS ADVOCATE Randy L. of the Bronx is a frequent contributor to the sports blog arm of the Cumbucket Media Empire. Upon hearing that one of the fanzine world's most REVERED titles was due for a relaunch, he offered, nay, INSISTED on contributing the following guest editorial - GC) Greetings, dateless chumps, selfabusers and the terminally unemployed persons who actually followed this publication in its alleged heyday.

While some of us devoted our lives to respectable professions, you people can name 3, possibly 4 Black Flag drummers.

CONGRATULATIONS, your parents must be pretty fucking proud.

As you might've read elsewhere, despite presiding over the sports world's #1 franchise, I'm not without a softer side. Though I grew up in a home without pets ---Papa Levine always said, "you lay down with a dog, you get fleas" (years later I heard this very same excuse when an escort service told Nick Swisher to take his business elsewhere) ---- in recent years, I've come to find great joy in the companionship of man's best friend, the labrador breed in particular. I've got four at the moment , Mariano, CC, Joba and Hank. As much as I wish I could say I love them all equally, I have to admit, Joba's not the brightest pup, and Hank...well, he's hiding his face from the camera because he's exceedingly ugly.

dogs have ever looked me in the eye and repeatedly lied to me about taking human growth hormone, visiting dubious "wellness" centers or dating women that could beat up Lou Ferrigno. Not once have I had to hire a private investigator to follow these dogs 24/7, only to uncover some personal detail so revolting, so offensive to the belief system of a normal member of the Yankee Universe, to see this information outlined in print would be tantamount to curb-stomping the skulls of sweet children across this land who worship their baseball heroes.

So I think you know where I'm going with this. Dogs are the best. They're not frauds, cheats, liars, narcissists or gutless cowards who believe the best way to separate Bronson Arroyo from a baseball is by hitting the pathetic Oasis tribute artist with an IMAGINARY FUCKING PURSE. I meant what I said about my pact with my dogs. It's for a lifetime, one I'll never have to interrupt by voiding the deal to spare the good name of my employer, in particular a pair of underachieving, genetic lottery winners who are still having their asses wiped by their intellectual superiors well into MIDDLE AGE. Sometimes I encounter fans on my way in and out of the New Stadium. Very often, they'll ask how I see things shaping up for Joe Girardi's squad. "Is A-Rod coming back?"

My answers are always the same. Anything less than a World Series triumph means we're a failure. And, "who?"