The Miscreant - Issue 59

in this issue page 4

just dance kyle kuchta reflects on a lifetime of having all the right moves

page 6

an interview with sharkmuffin richard john cummins catches up with the brooklyn band

page 9

juan wauters + mac demarco at baby’s all right jamie langely captures a night of rock ‘n’ roll

page 10

an interview with mitski laetitia tamko asks mitski about music, life, and everything in between

page 14

carolina on my mind oliver fields remembers his dad’s favorite songs

page 16

not bossy, i’m the boss morgan schaffner survives her first year in nyc

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songs so you don’t cry at work mo wilson helps us hold it together

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the four stages of (ticket-buying) grief olivia cellamare shares the hardest part of being a music fan

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and the kids + told slant + pwr bttm andrew piccone documents a rocking night at the knitting factory

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we international laura lyons maps out her favorite artists from around the world

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that meloncholy season’s a-changin’ amanda dissinger curates a playlist for autumn

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our life is (not) a movie cassandra baim gives her life the hollywood treatment

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heart and brain a comic by mary shyne

page 29 girl of the hour mary luncsford sings the praises of courtney barnett page 30

impose offbrand festival walter wlodarczyk photographs the day-long fest

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my top 8: wrost songs for doin’ it bella mazetti makes sure we never have another bad sex playlist

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oh, no, love, you’re not alone anneliese gives up drinking and gains something greater

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that shea stadium drew kimmis considers his place in the diy scene

page 38 i could do better claire dunderman considers the weight of perfectionism

JUST DANCE by kyle kuchta

The first dancing I remember doing was formal tap. And when you’re three years old, “formal tap” literally means tapping your toes for eight beats, doing it on the other foot, marching in place, wiggling your hips and then bowing. My former Rockette-turned-tap teacher made sure we were on point, though. I was the only boy amongst twenty or so girls in tutus and, needless to say, I rocked that bright red sequin cummerbund and bowtie combo. Tap was six years of my life. Not dancing with three year olds the whole time, I got better. One time, I did a whole routine to “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” with a baseball bat. My peak.

My informal dancing days came shortly after. And that’s all thanks to VH1, MTV and my grandparents’ Colombia House catalogues (RIP; the catalogues, not my grandparents). I gotta say, I was quite the video vixen. At seven, my dad caught me in my whitey-tighties trying to dance to Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up.” The video wasn’t even on the TV; I was just hearing the song in my head. That was fucking weird.

Neither the confused scolding of my dad nor the confines of my living room could prevent me from dancing in front of people. A lot of me wished that it did, but I kept trying. Like at summer camp when I was nine, I always voted for “dance contest” as our afternoon activity and I deemed myself “choreographer” of everyone else’s acts for the talent show. I feel like I might have pressured some girl to sing Christina Aguilera’s “Come On Over” so I could be a backup dancer. Not sure about that, but I do know that I memorized the dance to *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” and tried to teach kids. That fell through, because that’s what happens at summer camp.

Bunch of amateurs.

Your identity is always changing, especially at these preteen ages. So as soon as I was done dedicating a dance of *NSYNC’s “This I Promise You” to my fifth grade crush (don’t worry, only my mom saw these moves; I never found the opportunity to perform my gentle head bobs for Gina), I immediately found pop-punk. So at this point, I’m pogoing around my room, bowling alleys, and family barbeques asking “What’s My Age Again?” I’m eleven.

Then the feelings hit. All of a sudden you go from jumping around to “Basket Case” to actually being a thirteen year old basket case and angry-cry-dancing to “A Decade Under The Influence.”

I didn’t even want to be a singer, but I was really trying to nail those signature Adam Lazzara microphone tricks.

I don’t remember if I was ever successful with those. Teen angst kind of stifles your memories of things you thought would make you “cool,” but what remains are the memories of extreme angst and awkwardness. Like eighth grade graduation when the most popular girl in school finds you sitting outside, alone, staring up at the night sky and asks you to dance and you say, “I’m not much of a dancer,” and she says she’ll come get you when a slow song comes on, but she doesn’t come get you when “Stairway to Heaven” plays and then the dance ends without you. having tapped a toe, so you go home and write about it in your LiveJournal. You know, small things like that stick with you. And they stay with you well in to high school when you get

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stood up at Winter Ball. I managed to dance there, though. I don’t remember it, but according to my LJ my friends (friends? Didn’t know I had ‘em then) and I danced to “Pony” by Ginuwine.

Besides those attended and unattended dances that filled my high school schedule, those years were moves included awkward body twitching, sad attempts at hardcore dancing, and very weak headbanging. That is, until junior prom where, amongst tanks of clownfish and stingrays at the Mystic Aquarium, I accomplished what every high school student is supposed to; I grinded, I danced in a circle around a pile of heels, and I kissed my then soon-to-be girlfriend during “Stairway to Heaven.” Full circle. Senior prom was more of the same, except this time it was amongst Native American figures and exhibits at the Mashantucket Pequot Muesum, and that girl was now my official girlfriend.

Wouldn’t have guessed that four months later, I’d be in Syracuse spending every weekend sweating in dark and dingy basements, a body in a sea of drunk, beer-soaked college kids dancing to anything and everything. This is where it all comes together. It didn’t matter the music, it didn’t matter the people, it just mattered that there was a space to move. I wasn’t going to let that opportunity pass by without grooving just a little, you know? I danced on an ice rink once for a piece of “art video.” And then I was consistently challenged to “do my best Jagger.” I did a mean stanky leg that was a huge hit at frat parties I wasn’t invited to. College is a time for experimenting.

Post-grad dance life is a lot different. It’s held some weird dances for me. Like that time I got too drunk at karaoke and danced to someone else singing Eminem (I think). But it has also held some of the most important dances of my life, like sharing the first dance at my wedding with that girl that I kissed at junior prom. And then, only a couple hours later, dancing to A$AP Rocky’s “Wild For The Night” with a dozen of my best friends. All of these moments I fondly remember now as I wait for the Red Line train at Universal Station. And I’m freely grooving to Parliament’s “Dr. Funkenstein.”

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AN INTERVIEW WITH SHARKMUFFIN by richard john cummins Several years ago, Brooklyn band Sharkmuffin had been scheduled to play a house party in Virginia. They never got to do their set. “We ended up getting kicked out of the house,” recalls bassist/vocalist Natalie Kirch.

Discourteous behavior does have a long history of getting rock bands eighty-sixed from all sorts of places, but in this case nobody was peeing on the floor or accidently-on-purpose destroying shit. In fact, Sharkmuffin – Kirch and singer/guitarist Tarra Thiessen – just might have been the victims of a marginal overreaction.

“Someone who lived there was like, ‘eat whatever you want.’ So Tarra [ate] like, two Frosted MiniWheats [out of a box],” Kirch says. “Then another roommate came back and said ‘You’re eating all our cereal!’ And [then] his girlfriend started yelling.” This quickly escalated into a shouting match pitting the band and their friends against the house’s residents.

They might not actually be out to disrupt anyone’s Kellogg’s supply, but musically speaking Sharkmuffin can be pretty menacing, delivering their brash-but-tasty mix of surf, garage punk and hardcore, all capped off by Tarra’s often-screeching vocals.

“I think that our earlier works… were more in the lines of just straight-up punk,” says Kirch, “and I think we’ve moved more towards… a lot of guitar parts [that] have more of that surf-y Ventures-y Dick Dale sort of a sound, and that a lot of our earlier influences like the Ronettes and the Shangri-Las are coming out a little more. So I think it’s more a conglomerate of our influences in the latest work that we’re doing.”

Unlike the band themselves at the Virginia house, no Sharkmuffin song overstays its welcome: only two of their so-far-released tracks (barely) exceed a length of two-and-a-half minutes. Lyrical subject matter can be just as unabashed: while the title “Tampons are for Sluts” alone might rattle some cages, Thiessen says that the song, in part, is “about having sex on your period.”

Thiessen and Kirch first met at a 4th of July party on the Jersey Shore in 2012, and ended up playing their first show ten days later. The band released two EPs, 1097 and She-Gods of Champaign Valley (both 2013) before original drummer Drew Adler (male) left the band to pursue other, non-music goals on the West Coast. Another drummer came and went before Janet LaBelle’s arrival, though just as she was settling in as a permanent member of the band an arm injury forced her to step down in early 2014.

But before you could say “Spinal Tap” (“they have an album called Shark Sandwich!” Thiessen points out), the band had a complete reversal-of-fortune. After joking between themselves about how great it would be if veteran drummer Patty Schemel would volunteer to play for them, Kirch recalls, “she ended up being the first person to respond to our search [for a drummer].”

Schemel – best known for being a member of Hole during that band’s platinum-selling Nineties peak in addition to being the subject of a 2011 feature documentary (Hit So Hard) - ended up

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playing the drums on all ten tracks of Sharkmuffin’s current full-length debut album, Chartreuse, as well as a handful of live dates.

While Kirch insists that the Sixties influences have a greater presence, some might detect a generally harder edge on the new album. “There are harder songs like ‘Now’ and ‘I Called You from the Moon,’” Tierrsen says, “but there are couple of songs poppy songs on the new record, too.” She also explains that while the title Chartreuse refers to an obscure color, it is also the name of a French liqueur – “sort of a secret recipe thing” - which she says is produced by two people who each know only half the ingredients.

That sort of balance – by design or otherwise – does seem to be an important part of the Sharkmuffin dichotomy. For example, the stark contrast of the two members’ appearance is hard to miss (and subsequently much commented-on), as tall, leggy, dark-haired and brooding Thiessen physically towers over the five-feet-seven sunny blonde Kirch.

Even the women’s professional backgrounds indicate a wide diversity: Kirch has a Master’s degree in early childhood development and had been working as a Pre-K teacher before recently leaving to pursue music full time (“I’ll miss the kids,” she says, but adds in true rock star form: “not the 6:30 a.m. wake up!”). Thiessen, on the other hand, had been working as a server in a mostly-nights job at a Brooklyn bowling alley.

“I think it’s like, a funny pairing, but it’s something people really seem to appreciate on some comedic level,” Kirch says. “People have commented often on the like yin-and-yang nature of Tarra and my relationship. Like, people would say that she’s the shark and I’m the muffin.”

This (mis)interpretation of the band’s name is nowhere near as common as that which suggests that it’s meant to imply a vagina with teeth. “My gynecologist asked me if [the name] was a vagina reference,” Thiessen says. (it’s actually just a composite of the last two bands she played in: Poolshark and “a joke band” called Slutmuffin).

Sharif Makewy had been sitting behind the drum kit for the Sharkmuffin’s extensive U.S. trek which recently ended. They had been touring with the band Lost Boy ?, which includes Kirch’s boyfriend Davy Jones who has been playing second guitar in Sharkmuffin as well.

Several former flames of Thiessen’s also had a presence of sorts, as they inspired some of the band’s recent lyrics. But don’t expect love songs or traditional broken-heart ditties. One of her exes turned out to have been a heroin addict who had been stealing money from her. “It was pretty obvious to everybody, like, except for me,” she admits. “I was in denial.” She would go out to California to be with another boyfriend whom she says neglected to tell her he was seeing someone else.

“A lot of the songs on the album are [about] secrets and about things that are hidden and about things that [we keep] hidden from each other,” Thiessen says. At the rate they’re going, Sharkmuffin won’t be a secret or hidden from most of the world for much longer.

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This issue is brought to you by making lunch.

Single of the

Week

“Carry Me Out” will always sweep me under and totally consume me. The way the song builds like a thundering team of boulders rolling down a hill is completely driven by these massive percussion elements and Mitski’s fortuitously layered vocals. The song all of a sudden explodes into a booming chorus of bleedingheart voices, searching for something.

You suddenly see a ballroom filled with versions of your former self, waltzing thru life with as much grace as anyone could possibly muster.

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MAC DEMARCO JUAN WAUTERS

BABY’S ALL RIGHT

AUGUST 04, 2015 photos by jamie langley

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Laetitia Tamko: You’re now back in New York from two very long tours since the release of Bury Me at Makeout Creek, what were your favorite places?

Mitski: I’ve actually done six tours (I think?) since the record release, but they happened one after the other without much time between them, so I also get confused about how much I’ve been on the road. The place that changed my life was the stretch of land on the drive from Colorado through Wyoming towards the west coast. I cried in the car the first time I saw it, and getting out of the car and breathing its air made every little thing in my life stop mattering. Also driving through Kansas is always like a Lynch movie.

Laetitia: Did any one place made you consider moving out of New York?

Mitski: People I’ve met on tour have tended to want to move to NYC instead of trying to get me to move to them. Although people in LA all furiously make their case for LA and how it’s better than NYC. I’m fatally attached to NYC. I can’t leave it even though it’s beyond my means to live here. It’s a doomed kind of love.

Laetitia: I agree that NYC is captivating for reasons that seem far larger than the existential dread it can bring. I want to talk about Bury Me at Makeout Creek a little bit. What was the writing process like for you on this record? I’m also interested to hear about your recording process. Sometimes musicians, based on time/money/creative exhaustion, set aside a chunk of days, weeks, months to record everyday. Some others spread out the tracking throughout months with many “off” periods etc. So, walk me through what that process was like for your last record? Is this different from how you recorded Lush, and Retired from Sad, New Career in Business?

Mitski: I have a hard time remembering details even though it wasn’t long ago, precisely because it was so spread out and done at random times. It was also with the same engineer who recorded Retired From Sad, so sometimes I get the memories of the two albums mixed up. It was so incredibly spread out over a year or so, but not at all because I wanted it that way - it was incredibly frustrating. I had graduated college and was living in the city, while Patrick Hyland (the engineer/producer) was still at SUNY Purchase where I’d graduated from, and we had to work around each other’s lives and travel a lot. There wasn’t any label support and I didn’t have any money, so it had to be when one of us found a place we could record for free at a time we were both available. Then when we found the time and space we would record what we could, based on what best suited the environment. And that’s just for the sessions where we were playing the instruments between us. It was a whole other process getting other musicians involved for parts we knew we couldn’t play convincingly well.

Laetitia: Patrick Hyland sounds great! It’s so nice to be on the same page with someone creatively. Is your new record done and recorded? If not, when do you plan to start working on it? If so, do you know when it will be out?

Mitski: Patrick IS great - if you ever have a record you want to make sound super good, give him a call! My new album is all recorded but completely unmixed. I recorded everything in 2 weeks in January, really fast and efficiently, and then I went on tour after that and haven’t had

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a moment to sit down and finish it with Patrick until now. So right now Patrick and I are just starting to revisit it again, and kind of freaking out remembering what we did, haha.

Laetitia: Haha, revisiting recordings is kind of my nightmare. Correct me if I’m wrong but, you’ve been home from your last tour with Elvis Depressedly and Eskimeaux for a couple of weeks now, how are you spending your time off?

Mitski: I actually don’t have a home. I moved out of my NYC apartment a while back, because I’m on the road so much that it doesn’t make sense to be responsible for an apartment. But I’m hiding out upstate near New Paltz.

Laetitia: I find that when I come home from tours, it takes me a long time to transition back into staying in place because of feeling super comfortable with displacement. I’d love to hear if we share that sentiment and your general feelings on coming back from tours. Is it relief? Is it agitation?

Mitski: Laetitia, I’m glad you asked about this, because I was recently talking to Felix [Walworth] about this, who in turn told me they and Elaiza [Santos] were talking about this (or maybe it was Gabby [Smith] who talked to Elaiza, we were in the car and I don’t remember). It’s something we’re all individually trying to figure out! I’ve found that these past few weeks haven’t felt like much of a break, and have felt more like a huge metaphorical house-cleaning for my brain and body. I think the reason I feel so good on tours, despite the physical discomfort and overall lack of healthy routines, is because every day, you get to literally drive away from whatever your real problems are and deal with very straightforward issues, like getting to the gig on time, doing radio and promo work, finding food, sound checking and setting up, playing the actual show, etc. Then you’re additionally always around other people, so there’s no real room to privately sort through your feelings the way you get to in regular life without even being conscious of it. On tour, even when you’re in the car not doing anything, you’re still in workmode, you’re on your toes the whole time. This (for me anyway) is kind of an escape, where I just forget that I have things in my psyche that I need to deal with, and I get to feel like I don’t have any problems. But the thing with not dealing with your issues is that they don’t just go away, so the longer you don’t deal with them the more they pile up. If your soul or brain or what have you is your house, instead of cleaning your house every other day or on the weekends, little by little as things come up, when you’re on tour you just don’t clean or tidy whatsoever.

Things are stacked on top of other things, dust is collecting, the food in the fridge is rotting, the kitty box is looking really ugly. Coming home from being on tour nonstop since January has basically been like opening the door to my house and nearly fainting at how fucked up my house has gotten unattended, and for the first few weeks after tour I couldn’t even move, I couldn’t do anything because I was so overwhelmed by not even knowing where to clean first.

I’ve just recently finally gotten to making a plan, like okay, first I’m going to work on this corner of the house, then I’m going to tackle this. But it’s definitely something that’s hard to convey to people who don’t tour for a living, and talking about this with you has already made me feel good about it, haha. I hope this extended metaphor hasn’t gotten too confusing.

Laetitia: Not at all! The neglected house is such a great and appropriate metaphor. Let’s talk about your songwriting process. Specifically for Bury Me at Make Out Creek. Do

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you tend to “sit” with songs for a long time? Do you write on a guitar or a piano then transcribe? Have you gone through a writing drought or has songwriting been more or less smooth for you?

Mitski: Bury Me marked the first time I picked up a guitar, so I was learning how to play guitar as I was writing on it. I guess because it was so fresh and new to me as an instrument, the writing of Bury Me also felt fresh and unburdened with the self-criticism and self-consciousness that I’d developed studying at a conservatory. So Laetitia - if you ever get writer’s block, I recommend writing on a new instrument! The record I’m putting out next year was also written on guitar, but for the one after that which I’ve just started writing, I’ve come back to the piano with a fresh perspective (I’ve also become really bad at piano after not playing it for so long!

I have to start practicing again.) I still unfortunately don’t understand my writing process, as self-aware as I am in other regards. It just seems to happen.

Laetitia: Writing on a new instrument as the writer’s block cure, I will try that! You’ve made so many strides Mitski and I’m so happy for you! Where would you like to go, with your career, that you haven’t gone already?

Mitski: I would like to go back to writing for chamber and orchestral instruments. That’s what I did in school, and I shifted to “rock” arrangements because those were my only resources after graduating college, but I’m hoping one day I’ll grow to a point where I can find the support to make orchestral music again. I go back and forth between wanting to go to grad school for composition and not, because after I graduated undergrad I realized, oh my god, I still don’t know anything about music.

Laetitia: Speaking of your orchestral work, I heard a song from one of your previous albums at Happyfun [Hideaway] one night. Without having heard the old albums before, I knew it was you by the songwriting and vocals and I was so drawn to the orchestral arrangement of it. (I just looked it up on Spotify, it’s called “Goodbye, My Danish Sweetheart”) -- I play the opening riff on bass as a finger exercise sometimes. Haha, it’s a lot of fun! Do you have any shows or tours you are excited about and that you can talk about at the moment?

Mitski: Oh yeah! There’s one show at Shea Stadium on October 3rd that I’m more excited about than I’ve been for any other show. Three ferocious poets, (Leslie Jamison, Jenny Zhang and Margaret Ross) are going to read and then I’m closing with the set. Bryn at Ad Hoc had the idea of having poetry readings be more like rock shows, and I was like HELL YES. Laetitia: That sounds incredible, damn. It’s been so fun talking! Let’s be email pen pals, letters would be difficult since neither of us seem to sit still. Mitski, you’re great, I hope to see you again soon.

Mitski: Laetitia, it’s been so wonderful talking with you, thank you for doing this, and if you ever need to just chat with an outside source while on tour I hope that I’m the person that comes to mind.

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CAROLINA ON MY MIND by oliver fields Music gets to me. My high school years were spent in a non-stop haze of emotional devastation that was completely and utterly caused by my listening to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea way too many times. Well, that album plus hormones plus Jess from AP European History deciding not to go to Junior Prom with me. (Dear God, Jess, I made you a fucking mixtape! It had Yo La Tengo’s “Our Way To Fall” on it! I was really hoping you would touch my penis because of that!

The fact that I was a complete and utter asshole in high school is besides the point!)

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Still, it’s easy for music to get inside me, to root around and find some sort of home in the unused spaces of my lizard brain. I’m the hypnotist’s volunteer that has a hard time coming out of the trance. If you play “All My Friends”...then I’m going to feel some shit, and I’m going to feel some shit on a very deep level. There’s this theory I have that every time you listen to a song, you connect with who you were the first time you heard the song, and you connect with who you’re going to be the last time you hear that same song, and all the people you’ll be in between, like seeing a tree from the branches to the roots. I realize that last sentence makes me sound like a 50-something owner of a new age bookstore who’s just a bit too proud of the fact he has most of his fair left, but it’s true. I loved plugging myself into that outlet.

And then my dad died, slowly, of brain cancer.

And now I’m wary. Because there are songs he loved, and if I listen to them, I will not be able to function as an adult for the rest of the day. The main one is “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the Peter, Paul and Mary version. It’s such a simple song, but it’s simple the way a knife is simple.

I heard it once as I was walking home from work, it was playing on some ice cream parlor’s speaker system and I cried the entire way home. Just bawled. Snotty nose, red eyes, doing that thing where you clench your fist real hard in order to maintain composure. People sort of stared, but I live in a big city, so nobody gave a shit, thank god. As I was hurrying home, wiping tears away, I was pricked by that part of myself that really wants me to be a responsible human being. What if I hear it during work? What if my boss decides to use it as interstitial music for our radio show? Am I going to be one of those awful people that cry in bathrooms because they can’t handle their shit? I came to the realization that I can’t handle my shit.

Now, my dad had really crappy taste. Alison Krauss, John Denver, James Taylor. Do you remember Phil Collins’ Tarzan soundtrack? My dad did. He loved it. Not any other Phil Collins albums, just the Tarzan soundtrack. Did he dig the smooth, sultry grooves? Did he identify with Tarzan’s burgeoning friendship with the Rosie O’Donnell-voiced gorilla? I have no clue. Point is, I can easily avoid the Tarzan soundtrack. Bon Iver hasn’t done a semi-ironic cover of “You’ll Be In My Heart” yet, which I’m immensely grateful for. And honestly, I can probably avoid most of the songs my dad loved, Peter, Paul, and Mary don’t get played too often, my fear of hearing them at work is almost certainly unfounded.

Sometimes though, I want to hear the songs my dad loved. I’ve curled up in my bed and listened to “Carolina in my Mind” far more often than I’d like to admit. Those songs, the shitty songs that I absolutely hated before my dad died, I still hate them, but they just blow the pretentious bullshit I usually listen to out of the water. Because I have this theory, that when you listen to a song, you connect with every time you’ve ever heard that song, and the first time I heard “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” or “Fire and Rain,” my dad was the one who played played them for me, probably hoping I’d like them in the same way he did.

I don’t like those songs the same way he did, but I can live in those songs for a while. They remind me of him and that’s exactly what I want. I want to be reminded of him when I’m alone and can mourn him without other people pitying me. I don’t want to immediately bawl my eyes out if someone happens to be into late 70s acoustic rock. So I try to listen to as much of the music he loved as I can, hoping that eventually, those songs won’t devastate me as much, hoping I can control the way I remember him, the way his music gets to me. It hasn’t worked yet.

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NOT BOSSY, I’M THE BOSS: A REFLECTION ON 365 DAYS OF LIVING IN THE CRAZIEST CITY ON EARTH by morgan schaffner It’s August 2015! Which mainly means one thing: it means I moved to NYC a year ago to live in a Brooklyn apartment. In Bed Stuy at that! It also means that it’s been a whole year of pursuin’ dreams and living with some pretty rad ladies. Reflecting on the past year and the things I’ve learned, *not that I can share too much wisdom* I’ve learned a few things that can hit you hard in the gut. Like knock you off your feet hard. It’s really okay if you don’t have everything figured out, it has a way of working it out as it should. Secondly, I’ve learned that life can really blow, but you gotta keep moving. Just like how you gotta keep getting through that tricky subway turnstile, just keep moving through it and it’ll (also) be just fine!

Let me back up before I get ahead of myself with all this positivity: I was stuck down in Virginia in the middle of a humid summer waitressing with a degree and no idea what was going to happen next, let alone in NYC. I had saved up all my dollar pizza tips, had a few internships under my belt, and a degree to pursue exactly what many go to do in New York, work in music! The luckiest part of this situation was that two of my best friends had similar ambitions of living in Brooklyn and working in music, so I had some backup. And they picked out an apartment for us (they totally rule for that among many other reasons.) I got to New York though almost completely broke and taking interviews anywhere that would speak to me… music PR companies, management companies, publishing houses, major record labels.. for weeks and weeks. These weeks would eventually turn into a month of living in NYC with no job and freaking out about how to live life with no income.

Next came an unbelievable turn of events. Remember that awesome roommate I mentioned?

She mentioned I had serving experience, that person mentioned her restaurant became short on two servers that day! That day also happened to be the day I found out from the last place I had interviewed at that I was “just not who they decided to go with for the position.” Which started my lovely relationship with my restaurant job/full-time job that turned into my current side hustle. Always gotta be hustling ($$$.) The thing about serving in a nice restaurant in Chelsea in Manhattan, is all the clientele love you (as long as you play the part well) and the money can come quickly. However, that can make it even harder to leave. It’s become a second

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family of mine that I’m not quite ready to walk away from even still.

Summer turns to fall, Morgan becomes a waitress at a French wine bistro in the big city and manages to fuck up things on the daily in all the imaginable ways at this point. Crazy late to work? Yep. Drenched in the rain with no extra socks? Yes. Dropping fancy wine glasses? Yep. She’s also still interviewing for music jobs, two in a row of which she’s over 30 minutes late to the interviews (damn you Google Maps!! Seriously, always be an hour early even if you don’t think you need it). She goes the wrong way on the subway to almost comical extent (ahem… just about every other time). She makes friends with a chef who turn out to be way more creepy, overbearing, and crazy than most would imagine, but eventually catches on. She even eventually figured out which side of Union Square to come out on to be closest to the Whole Foods. #winning All through this, she interviews and interviews (she’d like to think that they’re getting better with each try... which may be very well true!) but more importantly, she goes to shows. She sees bands play in the LES. At Mercury Lounge and Rockwood. In Brooklyn. At Palisades. At Shea Stadium. At Silent Barn. She gets to know some of the bands playing in Brooklyn and tries to see past all the bullshit and remember why she moved in NYC in the first place. The love of live music and the hard-work that goes into making any single show any night of the week happen. Keeping this perspective, she stopped freaking out so hard about not having the office job, and saw as much music and made as many tips as she could. She also saw all the purple-lighted smiling faces packed in a little room and totally realized that this could be enough, and it had been enough all along.

It was then when I wasn’t so hard on myself that I was able to interview well and get hired at a music publishing and artist management company as the front desk receptionist and exec personal assistant. However, even despite checking off this box of “first big girl job” and reaching the goal I had worked pretty hard for, it hit me just weeks in that this wasn’t the right fit. Which also turned out to be fine! It was a just a very first-jobby kind of job. I did all the office bitch work that needed to be done that wasn’t morally fit to make an intern do. From mopping and vacuuming to ordering my bosses Ubers across town to making sure my boss had his favorite $100 pen at his desk, it was exactly what I needed to make myself keep looking and striving still for something else. I knew there had to be a better fit, because I didn’t feel the warm affection and fuzziness I got at those shows when dealing with the artists we worked with everyday. I did though get that by seeing indie artists at the DIY shows happening all around me. By seeing these awesome artists making exciting music like Speedy Ortiz, Eskimeaux or Mitski, I just knew there was something better.

So I kept waitressing and I kept my underwhelming office receptionist job. And I kept interviewing, (do we see a theme here?) worked 6-7 days a week and went out most nights to catch kickass bands and those people I met remembered that I had a hankering for something better… And eventually something came! After meeting a few key people, four rounds of interviews, two and a half months of interviewing, lots of convincing that I could handle the job, I now am the tour marketing coordinator at Mom + Pop Music and work with some of my favorite artists on the globe, let alone work for some really talented people. And even though I still serve rosé in Chelsea during Sunday brunch, I have to say I’ve never been happier. And thankfully I’m still catching shows most nights of the week and seeing those purple-lighted smiling faces.

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SONGS SO YOU DON’T CRY AT WORK by mo wilson This mix goes out to everyone working a stressful job, and especially if that job has nothing to do with your chosen passion (thanks college degree). For all the office drones and restaurant counter workers, here’s a collection of songs that have kept me from crying at work and made the monotony seem part of the grand arc in a coming-of-age film.

Grimes - “REALiTi” Released as a thank you for her Asian fans, instead of the sci-fi terror of Visions, Grimes sounds like a warm spirit guide as she assures you “oh baby every morning there are mountains to climb.” It’s a song about striving that sounds as comforting as a lullaby.

Fleetwood Mac - “Dreams (Nanosaur Remix)” Idk what Stevie meant when she said “thunder only happens when it’s raining, players only love you when their playing” but I take it to mean big things only happen during shitty times and some people are just jerks. Mostly I just ride in the slipstream of her voice and marvel at how Nanosuar can make a classic rock song sound like cutting edge neon bedroom pop.

Tame Impala - “Let It Happen” Tame Impala has been making waves in the indie scene with their psychedelic sounds for a minute, but their album Currents reaches a new level of “woaahh this is trippy dude.” This is by no means the best song, but the synth current is strong enough to float you on through life, especially if that phase is a end-of-shift dance party with your co-workers.

Rihanna - “American Oxygen” In the midst of the most confusing album rollout ever (Rihanna, we love BBHMM but where is the album?) we’re left with is at a song that seems straight forward patriotic. Don’t be fooled by the title: there’s a dark undercurrent in the wobbling bass before the chorus hits and in the way that Rihanna describes “sweating for a nickel and a dime” and the young boy “trying to get the wheels in motion.” This ballad isn’t about the American dream, it’s about the American struggle.

Marina and the Diamonds - “Blue” The standout track on her album Froot, this upbeat pop song is less commercial than her last album (thanks to the absence of Dr.Luke and Co.) but has the same sad girl lyrics that are destined to be plastered on pastel tumblrs across the internet. And from the way girls belted the lyrics at her Governors Ball performance, clearly this Froot has real juice of it. The video is also a real gem.

PWR BTTM - “Ugly Cherries” When they premiered this song on Spin, Ben Hopkins said “I just got so fucking tired of wishing I was different so I decided to scream, ‘She’s all right’ until I actually was” and the moment where he lets that line loose (and the squall of noise that follows) offers up a moment of pure catharsis. Live, the duo’s performance regularly hits this nerve of pure adrenaline, but this is the first time I’ve heard it on their recorded stuff.

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Bleachers - “I Wanna Get Better” This song is therapy set to hiccupping synths and clattering drums and will be sure to jump start your day.

Chvrches - “Gun” A pissed-off song about determination and finding your power, “Gun” got me through comprehensive exams and a 4 day stretch of 14 hour shifts. It’s bubbly bombast will get you though whatever you need.

Charli XCX ft. Simon Le Bon - “Kingdom” Subdued is a word rarely used in conjunction with Charli XCX, especially during her last hot pink album campaign where she dressed up like Marilyn Manson and got girls everywhere to scream “pussy power” at her shows. But subdued is exactly what this song is: singing over a simple piano arpeggio, Charli shows the soft power in her voice that she sometimes displays live but hasn’t showcased in a recording.

Drake - “We’re Going Home” Because after a long day we all want go home to Drake.

(Drake if you’re reading this call me).

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THE FOUR STAGES OF (TICKET-BUYING) GRIEF by olivia cellamare There are some things in life that make me feel uneasy, uncomfortable and a little stressed out. From meeting new people to most social situations, I’m just no good. However I feel right at home and comfortable with interviewing bands, I’m not sure why but maybe it’s because it makes me happy or something soppy. But there is one situation in life that no matter how many times I put myself through it, I always make it worse for myself. I just do not learn. That situation is, buying gig tickets. I simply fall apart so I thought I would share the stages I go through when putting myself through hell.

TIME. Time is a pain in the butt. Buying tickets you have to check what time they go on sale, after this you have to work out where you’ll be. Tickets usually go on sale at 9am on a Friday. Pre-sales sometimes happen and that can make life a little easier, but when you have to time your journey to work so you’re in before 9am on a Friday- that’s where the panic happens. The bus is too slow, the tube is delayed because someone dropped their phone on the tracks because they were on Buzzfeed trying to work out what flavour ice cream they are. EVERYTHING BAD IS HAPPENING ALL AT ONCE. If public transport isn’t working in your favour then maybe someone wants to talk to you about your weekend plans.

DON’T SELL OUT. Many times I have gone to buy tickets and I’m on the website ages before the ticket goes on sale, just to make sure I can get them but then it hits 9am. It hits 9am and you click on how many tickets you want- the aftermath of this determines your mood for the rest of the day. The pressure is on. Not only are you buying a ticket for yourself, but also for a pal. You don’t want to let them down do you? So much pressure!! When it says SOLD OUT and its 9:00 and 30 seconds you can’t help but think some awful human being has bought 10 tickets and will sell them for double. Or you see some annoying person on Facebook announce they’ve bought tickets and you know they only like ONE song, and they don’t even know the words. You wish you could rob their tickets. Or it can go through, you buy the tickets, which leads me onto my next point.

WHERE IS MY CARD?! Once you find your card, you have to remember the billing address for it, is there enough money in your account? Can you live off soup until next pay day? Do you care? Regardless, you go ahead anyway. You start thinking “WHAT IF MY CARD GETS DECLINED?!” And a wave of nausea comes over you, you start looking around thinking of things you could sell quickly on eBay. Does anyone need a guillotine? Or a huge printer/scanner? Probably not. You’re screwed if your card doesn’t go through. The timer in the corner is saying you have 5 minutes to type in your name, card details and address. WHY CAN’T I REMEMBER MY NAME OR HOUSE NUMBER?! Everything is too much. You faff around for 4 minutes and give yourself just one minute to type in everything. If you do this successfully, you can put on your CV that you work well under pressure. This is a different level of pressure because it all leads to personal happiness. When it all goes through, you can’t help but feel you’ve conquered the world or something. Its 9:05 and you’re already planning on having pizza at some point of the day as your reward. But it’s not over yet…

WHERE IS MY CONFIRMATION EMAIL?! Immediately it says. Immediately an email should arrive in your inbox with your email confirmation/e-tickets. Why isn’t it there?! You go back on the website and log in to your account to see if you’ve actually bought them, you check to see if there are any tickets left just in case. Check your bank account? No, you don’t need that negativity right now. You see there are tickets left, so you carry on with whatever it is that you’re supposed to be doing. About half hour later…it arrives! You feel like Charlie with his golden ticket! You, Cinderella, shall go to the ball! The panic, the sweats, the headache, and the fear- it all clears when you get your confirmation. You deserve nap. Followed by pizza. The crushing feeling of tickets selling out stays with you but you never prepare yourself for next time. It is brutal rejection, but when you get the tickets it is such a glorious feeling. “Never again” you say. You say someone else can buy the tickets? But do you trust them?!

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AND THE KIDS

TOLD SLANT PWR BTTM KNITTING FACOTRY

AUGUST 19, 2015

photos by andrew piccone www.andrewpiccone.com

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WE INTERNATIONAL

i constantly daydream about dropping out of life, backpack in hand, and filling my passport pages with as many stamps as possible. turns out that’s not too practical right now (for the most part), so instead i hop on a soundcloud and see where it takes me. the internet’s a beautiful thing, y’all. by laura lyons

HOWIE LEE // 只要你一摸 我就大叫

Howie Lee is a Beijing-based producer with a habit of sampling familiar sounds - door samp creaks, breaking glass, the erhu, and digital glitches all show up on this track - while throwing off any sense of familiarity with abrupt tempo changes. despite soundcloud being blocked in china, his richly textured, unpretextu dictable style caught the eye of the soulection folks and even the Doggfather himself.

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THAT MELANCHOLY SEASONS A-CHANGIN’ by amanda dissinger

I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but it’s already AUGUST! Soon enough it will be September and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas and then 2016 and then 2017 and… you get the point. I’ve been thinking a lot about fall, which is my favorite season due to apple picking and cooler temps, but also about how summer really passed me by this year. I’m nostalgic for beach days never taken, ice cream cones never eaten, sunburns never acquired. I’ve created a playlist that’s been getting me through the impending sudden change from summer heat to fall, full of whimsy, bittersweetness and longing, plus some of my favorite songs from the past few months and general all-time life favorites.

1. Carly Rae Jepsen - “Run Away With Me” If you haven’t listened to this album yet, you’re stupid. Kidding, but it’s only the pop masterpiece of the year and just really simply amazing. This song is perfect for those remaining long summer days where you’re dreamin’ about someone special and thinkin’ ‘bout if they just leaned over and whispered in your ear, “Run… Away with Me…” 2. Liz Phair - “Chopsticks” Pretty much every playlist I make has to have a Liz Phair track on it, but this one specifically for some reason always reminds me of the loneliness of the fall and winter seasons, because of the sparseness and quietness of the track. Really simple but stays with you for a while.

3. Bad Bad Hats - “Midway” I just discovered this album a few weeks ago, and I’m kind of obsessed with it. All of the songs are so heartbreaking and lovely, but this song stuck out to me. Another kind of lonely masterpiece.

4. Feist - “Let It Die” This is one of my classic favorite sad songs (and one of my favorite songs in general). I think it’s a perfect song, because it captures the beauty and sadness of a relationship ending. Always a song I listen to constantly in the winter and fall.

5. “Bully” - Trying The album from this Nashville band is so good. I have had the good fortune to see them play

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twice so far this year and their live show keeps getting better and better. Love this song a lot because of how real it is (“been prayin’ for my period all week” is a line that sticks out). Too good.

6. Total Makeover - “New England Highway” So I’m a bit biased about this because this is my friend Noah’s band, and also I do press for them, but knowing that all, you should still listen to this song a million times. It’s like a diary entry of a day you’ll never forget in a relationship, and it’s just haunting and so pretty. Highly recommended.

7. Mariah Carey - “Always Be My Baby” Because the tire swing video for this song is ICONIC summer. And because every playlist needs a lil’ Mariah sometimes.

8. - The Format - “She Doesn’t Get It” (Acoustic if you can find it!)

This is one of the songs that has signified the coming of fall for me since I was in high school.

The Format was so good (better than Nate Ruess’ other band Fun… just sayin’) and chronicles the relationship between an older guy and a younger girl who is leaving “on a Sunday” presumedly for college. The acoustic version is a lot sadder and slower (I like sad and slow, obviously) and now that I have a great new roommate who owns all of The Format’s records, I’ll be listening to (and singing at the top of my lungs) to this song all fall.

11. Alex G - “After Ur Gone” It took me a while to start loving Alex G and this song, and how it’s so short but does so much in just over two minutes. Really understated but a song that has rarely left my head in the past four months.

12. Ben Kweller - “Sundress” This is THE SONG for nostalgia and summertime and memories and all that fun and the piano playing and also the way Ben Kweller says softly, “I like your sundress, I like your sundress.” Sigh.

13. Pompeii - “Ekspedition” This is a great Austin band that I’m biased about for many reasons, but this song is a perfect roadtrippin’ song or song for the subway or taking long walks on weekends. I heard the beautiful album Loom that this track is from last fall and for that reason, it will always soundtrack this time of year for me.

14. Radiator Hospital - “Cut Your Bangs” One of my very favorite songs, and I pretty much put it on every playlist I make, and make sure everyone I know has heard it. So now I’m telling you to listen to this song- it’s basically the cutest truthiest (making that a word) song ever.

15. Jose Gonzales - “Heartbeats” If you’ve listened to this song and told me that you didn’t almost cry, then you’re lying for sure. Also, this song just sounds like something you would listen to snuggled up in sweaters and drinking hot cocoa or pumpkin lattes (or whatever it is you people drink). Rips my heart out every time, in a good way.

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OUR LIFE IS (NOT) A MOVIE by cassandra baim Do you walk down the street listening to music and imagine yourself as the plucky heroine in a quirky romantic comedy circa 2007 where a rapidly changing New York City is as much of a character in the story as the protagonists themselves? Yeah, me neither.

And I don’t deny my involvement in that way of thinking to feel superior, or feel like I’m outside the reach of pop culture’s tentacles. I just have a lot of opinions, and much like many other pieces I’ve written, this diatribe was inspired by many conversations I’ve had recently with a close friend (and also the movie They Came Together. Thanks, David Wain!).

About three months ago, I started working at my favorite place on this whole earth: Strand Bookstore. I mentioned the new employment opportunity to my aforementioned friend, and he responded in the same way he always does--by telling me that I have once again become the Manic Pixie Dream Whatever in a yet-to-be-made indie romantic comedy. Think about it--working at an indie bookstore is the number one job of all “quirky” girls with-bangs-and-big-eyes (I have neither, by the way). It’s our running joke, and I know that my friend takes me more seriously than I take myself, so I know he means no harm with his jibes.

But whether in conversation with my friends, or in an article on Vulture or the AV Club or any other media-ccentric publication I devour, any mention of someone comparing his or her life to a movie (especially in the context of those Manic Pixie Dream Whatevers) makes my blood boil a bit. I have always struggled to find my own voice and assert my personality any way I could. Putting my whole self in the stencil of some pre-existing film trope does nothing for my individuality or sense of self. I can’t cultivate my own personality if I’m trying to be someone else. And believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve idealized and romanticized and a whole manner of other “cized”s because all I’ve wanted is for my life to make a great story. But unlike an episode of my favorite TV show or any mumblecore film I watched when I was 17, there is no “CUT!” and there are no filmmakers to turn my thoughts and feelings and arguments with friends and unshakeable habit of breaking valuable items into hilarious mishaps and adorable prattfalls. If I fight with a friend, that fight keeps going until I fix it. If I break my iPhone, I can’t look at the camera and say “Oh, look what I did!” with my eyes. I loved the security of comparing my life to a movie or TV show. I loved being able to think “If those characters can handle this, then I can too!” But I’m trying to accept more responsibility for my life and the messes I make in it. Every day I have to remind myself that there are no team of editors around to make my life look the way I want it too.

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But I’m not perfect (because Manic Pixie Dream Whatevers never are) so for what it’s worth, I designed my own playlist for the yet-to-be-made quirky romantic comedy based (very loosely) on my life. That way, when Lena Dunham comes knocking on my door about adapting my story into a HBO series, at least one part of the project will already be taken care of!

1. Sarah Jaffe - “Clementine” This song will start the movie. I realize that my life is going nowhere, both romantically and professionally, and I need to make a change 2. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - “American Girl” Job hunting montage time! This plays as I go on a series of interviews, only to wind up working at a quirky independent bookstore with as much vibrancy and history as New York City itself.

3. Regina Spektor - “Fidelity” What better song to play during the montage of all the terrible OkCupid dates I go on?

4. Ryan Adams - “When the Stars Go Blue” I’ve finally met someone I could really see myself getting serious with.

5. The National - “Apartment Story” This plays in the background as new boyfriend takes me to a party to meet his friends. I meet his ex-girlfriend and suddenly everything I’ve worked for (up to that point) begins to crumble.

6. Dum Dum Girls - “Lord Knows” My insecurities get the better of me (because nobody’s perfect!) and I break up with my boyfriend, citing that I’m too “damaged” to be in love 7. Laura Stevenson and the Cans - “The Pretty One” My life begins to fall apart post-breakup: my cat gets sick and the vibrant and quirky bookstore goes out of business. What am I going to do?!

8. Mazzy Star - “Fade Into You” I default on my rent and my landlord evicts me. I pack my one suitcase and walk through the rain to the only place I can think of--my boyfriend’s apartment. I stand under his window and beg him to forgive me.

9. Rilo Kiley - “With Arms Outstretched” This is my happy ending--I realize I do love my boyfriend and somehow the bookstore magically reopens! I stand on the Brooklyn Bridge and marvel at how great my life will be.

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GIRL OF THE HOUR by mary luncsford “I used to hate myself, but now I think I’m alright.” Courtney Barnett sings this in “Small Poppies.” It’s just woven into the song so plainly that perhaps the overwhelming profundity of the line isn’t clear at first. But it’s all there. The past and the present and self-doubt and loathing and acceptance and sustainability. It’s where I’d venture to guess most of us come from, and where most of us end up. It’s what we say on the days when we can’t be our own peppy, pleated-skirt-wearing cheerleaders. “I’m alright.” Some days, that’s enough.

Lyrics like that are the reason I love Courtney Barnett (aside from literally every other aspect of her music). Not only can she shred and scream, but she can spit some insightful truth in the form of articulate lyrics that graze the skin and linger in your head. I can imagine her seeing roadkill or staring at her ceiling and thinking, there’s a song here. She celebrates and makes meaning out of the mundane—which I’d argue encompasses the majority of human existence.

She’s wordy and tender and loud and unapologetic. She’s the Rock Goddess I (we) need.

I need rock that’s about overthinking human interactions and I need rock that looks around and takes notice. Because that’s my reality. So much of the world is unremarkable at first glance (especially if you’re living in central Indiana). I need a soundtrack to ambling walks through sprawling suburbs. I need accompaniment for frigid bus rides in January. Courtney Barnett provides proof that nothing is ever unremarkable. There’s meaning wherever we want to make it. I need rock that reminds me of that.

When I was starting school, I used to be terrified of getting stuck. I would go to IU and get trapped in this track and I’d go around and around in a circle without actually getting anywhere. Now, I’m less convinced of that. But at the time, I was desperate. I was scared of the eventuality of it all. When the larger scale seemed too big and too unappealing to consider, I looked at the minute stuff. What is around me right now that holds beauty and significance?

The light flooding through the window. A kid throwing a tantrum in the library. A stranger getting taken off in an ambulance. It’s like those trick pictures that change depending on the angle you’re holding them. One moment it’s routine and the next it’s packed with meaning.

A friend told me to find joy in the mundane. I can’t always do that, but what I can do is find something. Artists who concern themselves with the everydayness of things always captivate me. Listening to Courtney Barnett makes me feel the same way that reading Frank O’Hara does. I’m taken by the beauty of moments captured during a traffic jam, or whilst walking around a city. It’s commonplace, but it’s not boring. It feels relatable and sincere.

Of course I need Courtney Barnett. Who else is going to remind me that no one really cares if I go to the party? Who else is going to sing earnestly about being sad while house-hunting or having an asthma attack while trying to garden? Who else is going to give me the frankness of “I used to hate myself, but now I think I’m alright?” Listening to her music makes me feel like there are songs waiting around everywhere. Plus, scream-singing along to “Pedestrian At Best” is extremely therapeutic. “I think you’re a joke, but I don’t find you very funny.” Come on.

That’s genius.

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SECRET PROJECT ROBOT

AUGUST 8, 2015

photos by walter wlodarczyk www.walterwlodarczyk.com

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IMPOSE OFFBRAND FESTIVAL

MY TOP 8: WORST SONGS FOR DOIN’ IT by bella mazzetti Many of us who have engaged in some kind of sexual activity have been here: You’re in the moment, you and your partner are both really feelin’ it. Your playlist is setting the mood and everything is hot hot hot. All of the sudden, after the few seconds of silence between songs, a tune comes on that makes you stop in your tracks with eyebrows raised. Sometimes the wrong song can ruin a moment. Here is a list of songs that have, or have almost, ruined some of mine.

Disclaimer 1: Just because I think a song isn’t right for sex for me doesn’t mean it is wrong for everything else! I pretty much love *most* of these songs, in the right context.

Disclaimer 2: This piece is not meant to shame anyone or yuck anyone’s yum. If you like having sex to the sound of Shaggy’s voice I salute you.

Drake - “Started from the Bottom” // A few months ago I thought it would be a great idea to throw on Drake’s Nothing Was the Same to set the tone. Don’t get me wrong, most of that album is great for sex. Most of it. A few songs in, the mood was right. And then it all changed.

The opening notes of “Started from the Bottom” came on through my laptop speakers. We both stopped. We both looked at each other, trying to decide if we wanted to stop to skip the song or keep going. We kept going. The sex was okay. Thanks, Drake.

Shaggy - “Angel” // The sensual beat and silky voice of Rayvon are deceptive in their abilities to make one think that “Angel” might be a beat for the sheets. I thought it would be good idea but as soon as Shaggy pops in in the verse, singing about how he wants to show the nation is appreciation, I checked out. There was no debate, the song had to go. Sorry, Shaggy Hop Along - “Laments” // The person I was with was in charge of choosing music for this occasion. He chose to start in the middle of Get Disowned. It was an amateur move.

Die Antwoord - “Beat Boy” // We all make mistakes. I had a huge Die Antwoord phase in my freshman year of college and put on $O$ while waiting for my bootycall boi to show up to my dorm room. This song is already painfully long and weird but in the act that was all exaggerated.

Still, we soldiered on. Eh. Sun Kil Moon - “Duk Koo Kim” // I don’t know how this happened but it did. Saddest bonk of 2012.

Nicki Minaj ft. will.i.am - “Check it Out” // Having sex to Nicki is a no-brainer. She is badass, she is empowered, she is fun, she is my idol. Having sex to this Nicki song, however, was kinda weird. Something about the will.i.am/ “Video Killed the Radio Star” sample mixture had me making a mental note to never put it on a sex playlist again. In my opinion, if the song distracts you too much, it might be a good idea to omit it. It did not really affect either party’s performance but I would not recommend this particular hit for my own heated moments.

XIU XIU - “Brian the Vampire” // This was an iTunes shuffle mishap. I love Jamie Stewart. This song is not good for doin’ it. Too overwhelming. Had to get up to change it. Bleh.

The Killers - “Somebody Told Me” // I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FUNNY AND IT WAS FOR LIKE 2 SECONDS AND THEN IT WAS JUST WEIRD. Like I said, we all make mistakes. The important thing is that you laugh about them. We did.

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OH, NO, LOVE, YOU’RE NOT ALONE: ON MUSIC AND (NOT) BEING DRUNK by anneliese cooper* (*with special thanks to Liv Bruce and Matt Constantino) I spent a fair amount of my teenagehood with Xs on my hands. Not by choice, necessarily—that’s just how you were allowed to see music, if at all, in puritanical Boston-Area, Massachusetts.

I wore the thick Sharpie lines like battle scars to school; “They negated my hands!” I would joke, because I’m a big dork. Still, thanks to deals struck with bands and steady gigs as a semi-pro merch girl, only once was I forced to leave simply for being 17—though I refused to go quietly. Because music and alcohol aren’t intrinsically tied, I ranted, just convenient bedfellows. Venues make money, booze makes for social lubricant, and everyone slip-slides on home together, but that’s hardly the point.

Soon enough, though, I figured it out. A drink in hand just made sense at a rock show, I learned—and relearned so often in college, each time I acted out the bridge of “How Soon Is Now?” across lower Manhattan: so you go and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own—slinking home at night in my big yellow sweatshirt, tinny soundtrack in my ears. It made the loneliness more palatable, somehow—purposeful—untouched but buoyed in that bleary warmth, as good as held. Because there’s this moment—approximately 4 beers deep, I found, midway back in the crowd—when the sound hooks onto the right place in your head and tugs it loose. Something unfolds, and you unfold with it, and you get to be gone.

Like how, toward the end of high school, my friends and I would go down into my basement, get wildly, apocalyptically trashed, and eventually resurface with a song, a poem, a fresh drama. It all felt very important, the sheer fact of vodka and falling into one another—like we were the first to figure it out. (We weren’t, of course: see New York punk, at once fueled and poisoned by druggy romance—”Teenage feelin’, rockin’ and a reelin’”, wailed The Dead Boys, “I’d die for you, if you want me to,” their grim prophecy.) We even developed a secret slang language, scrawled on masking tape strips stuck to the wall. A favorite: “Hands Clap Like Monster Teeth,” defined as, “for when you just know the hole in the ceiling is singing along.” Because there was, indeed, this massive hole in the ceiling—water-damage browning the white cork tile—and sometimes, through sludgy stop-start chords, it would appear to be flapping lazily in time. All this and more, a sloppy little paradise.

Years later, I still believed this so hard—that drunkenness preceded creativity, connection, experience—that I chased it all the way to its bitter, contradictory conclusion. Most nights were spent alone, hacking out messy acoustic covers (reaffirming, along with Elliott Smith, how whiskey works better than beer)—then limp, lost days bathed in chemical sweat, breathing shallow with my eyes closed, waiting for someone to come cut off my head.

“Please don’t be sad, my babylove…,” Ty Segall would plead. “I’m trying, man,” I’d croak.

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And still, it was realizing I had to stop drinking that made me feel most like I was going to die.

Because I could never write again, I reasoned (ignoring the fact that I hadn’t written anything but drunk gibberish in almost two years), and I would have nothing to do, no friends to do it with—a fact swiftly disproved by the sparkly angels who rushed to my side. One even responded to my hesitant, multi-scroll, ellipsis-laden “maybe taking a break” text with the simple and unexpected “Exceedingly badass.” For a few months, I got by on that bare-knuckle teenaged “fuck yeah”—augmented, appropriately, by a headful of Weezer, drowning in the flood.

Through a series of coincidences, I eventually found myself making clammy-palmed introductions to some fellow 20-something, tattoo-sporting, music-playing weirdos who were / had become / planned to stay sober—people who, up until this point, I quite honestly did not believe existed—one of whom met my name with, “Oh, like the Public Image Ltd song.” To which I politely replied: “You’re lying.” I had been lobbying for years—for years—begging all of my musician friends to write a song with “Anneliese” in it, my backwards campaign to normalize (it’s pronounced like “Anna-lisa”— only one person has ever gotten this right on the first try—she was German, and I nearly tackled her with joy). “Maybe it could be your new themesong,” he offered.

As soon as I got home, I looked it up—gloated a little at seeing the title spelled wrong—but I hooked my phone up to the speakers anyway and stood still in the middle of the apartment, hopelessly unprepared for the undertow of that opening riff, the clatter and pull— It was like the guitar and bass were on a blind date in an earthquake—tune a steak tugged between stray dogs—drawn and quartered, each band member a giddy doomsday horseman—a sonic exorcism, calling me out by name, refusing to let me fade.

Ever been alone and heard a voice not your own? And without warning, the room started to float.

It’s like how noise canceling headphones work by

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determining the frequency of the sound around you and manufacturing the opposite waves; my particular panic runs at the opposite frequency to electric guitar. Rock lore cites Lou Reed’s childhood electroshock as the source of his musical ferocity; conversely, my churning bafflement about everyone and everything gets cancelled out by, say, the thrum of “Heroin.” I guess, but I just don’t know. Oh, I guess, but I just don’t know.

I don’t mean that I don’t get help from outside my headphones (I get lots of help—fuck, so much help—the ability to ask for it at all due, in large part, to being sober in the first place). But I don’t mean to preach prohibition either. Did I see great music drunk? Yes, absolutely. Did I have excellent times drunk? Plenty. It would be wrong to manufacture regret.

By the same token, it would be wrong to say that it’s easy now, that it’s all the same except for what’s in my cup. These days, everything is present, all the time, always—and that’s where going to concerts can still feel strange, especially when you’re used to melting into the beersoaked dark. It’s hard sometimes just to show up and love something—to press yourself against what’s vital, eyes open—to trust it to be everything you hoped, to trust yourself not to fuck it up.

It’s hard, but music is a kind of drunk—a weird, alive kind, potent and sharp. “Music is muscular,” wrote Simon Critchley in his new book about David Bowie—who apparently has a tattoo of the Serenity Prayer in Japanese on his calf (makes sense, given the sweetly tragic admission

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tumbling after the peak in “Station to Station”: It’s not the side-effects of the cocaine, I’m thinking that it must be love). Music is muscular, sound is physical—takes up space underneath your skin, rearranges your cells (“Gimme your hands,” Bowie implores, though he knows he can’t properly touch you, and it works just the same: “you’re wonderful”). Music is muscular because it threads through your limbs and shakes them, comes at you from all sides and elbows you out of your own vicious head. Watch Iggy Pop onstage—it’s not voluntary, the way he flails, boiled alive by the fact of noise. Iggy, who said of making Raw Power, “I wanted the music to come out of the speakers and just grab you by the throat and just knock your head against the wall and just basically kill you.” Can you feel it? he asks again and again.

Which is to say, it’s possible, this whole sober thing. Sure, sometimes it’s weird; sometimes it’s exceedingly boring. I drink a lot of tonic water. I just want to feel everything, breathes Fiona Apple, and now I get to, gloves off—a grab bag, if nothing else. (I guess, but I just don’t know.)

If your experience is anything like mine, though, things might be sticky and awkward and harsh, especially at first, nothing quite so wide or smooth as you remember. Some people will be dull, glassy pupils or no—some people will be assholes—some people won’t quite know how to deal with you anymore, and there’s no way around how that hurts. You may well start wondering, meanwhile, how time could pretzel like this, so much unelided—what anyone ever does with their hands. But it’s alright, because the band is all together, and soon enough they’ll start.

Maybe not right away, but eventually something will click—and once it grabs you, those things won’t matter anymore.

A few months ago at Trash Bar (RIP), I stood watching Slothrust destroy another set, thundering through a Black Sabbath cover before settling into a new song, thick and clear and building toward a big crash—so I let my neck fall back, let it rush to meet me, drag me through: I don’t have anything in common with myself—cresting, fragile—except that I came from the sea like everyone else did—sliding down—but it is so unfamiliar now. Looking up, I saw that a sheet of soundproof foam had come loose, vibrating with the noise—another makeshift mouth, so I grinned back, flying.

Because apparently, the ceiling still sings if you let it.

Tracklist: The Smiths - “How Soon Is Now?” The Dead Boys - “All This and More” Elliott Smith - “King’s Crossing” Ty Segall - “Sad Fuzz” Weezer - “Say It Ain’t So” Public Image Ltd - “Annalisa” Lou Reed - “Heroin” (preferably off American Poet) David Bowie - “Station to Station” / “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” Iggy Pop - “Raw Power” (preferably off Mantra 1977) Fiona Apple - “Every Single Night” Slothrust - “II”

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THAT SHEA STADIUM by drew kimmis I suppose you could say that—when it comes to speaking critically about live music—I’m a bit of an outsider. I have never played a gig myself. Never been in a band. Never played an instrument save six months with the cello in fifth grade. My first memories of music involve bumpy rides crowded into the back of an old-model ford mini-van, attempting in vain to sleep through long stretches of 64 West through southwest Illinois listening to the voices that populated mid and late-90s popular country radio. Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes, perhaps Trisha Yearwood or even John Michael Montgomery. But I never saw any of them live.

My first concert was NSYNC’s No Strings Attached Tour at the age of twelve. As a birthday gift, my dad—for reasons that will continue to elude me—decided to take myself and my older brother to the show and yet it was, perhaps, a decent introduction to what a spectacle can accomplish. There were smoke machines, there were video interludes, there was official space on the set list for moments like “Justin’s Beat Box.” There was not however much in the way of an actual musical performance. And though my taste developed in what I hope to be a positive direction after I graduated the sixth grade, live music played very little role in my

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attachment to music.

Even just three years ago, as I first moved to New York, my perspective was strongly limited. I’d been to shows. Many of them good ones. But I still felt strongly that sitting down and listening to an album on my own terms brought more enjoyment. The energy and sense of occasion that invades a passionate performance in an intimate venue had escaped me. How could someone whose only tour t-shirt came from a Counting Crows/Goo Goo Dolls amphitheater double bill claim any sort of real appreciation for a great live set? Doubtless the group of denim-clad band-mates I encountered less than a week after arriving in the city were equally as skeptical of my expertise when I asked them, with an amazed look upon my face, how they’d managed to book a show at the Shea Stadium, only to find out there was a completely separate DIY space which simply shared the same name. I honestly wasn’t eager to be involved in that scene. Even if I had known which way was which.

My experiences with DIY back home had been predominantly basement shows and converted coffee shops or garages, mismatched lineups of each friend’s progressively more incoherent hardcore projects which always seemed, in earnest, to be more a showcase for drunken socializing than anybody’s artistic vision. So I was skeptical. In many ways I still am. For all the NYC shows I’ve seen in the interim I still feel at times like the outsider on the opposite end of that judgmental glare, and yet over the past year I’ve learned just how many genuine people are involved in trying to sustain this outlet for young and aspiring voices which feels distinctly necessary if not always perfect. A safe space. A vehicle for passionate and energetic performances that are not dependent on generating large streams of revenue. A network of (not always so) off-the-grid venues for like-minded musicians to share their projects with a community of peers and interested observers. The opposite of a spectacle.

And so I couldn’t help but be disappointed when I heard Patrick Stickles of Titus Andronicus proclaim this past month, at that same Shea Stadium, that New York DIY was officially dead. I wanted to remind him that in fact I had been to several such shows in just the past few weeks and that the people I observed there were very much alive and kicking—sometimes literally. Exuberantly so. “The scene isn’t what it was when I was a part of it,” he meant, always an easy argument to make about something you’ve left behind. But seldom a helpful one. Exactly how much truth there is to his claim I would find it difficult to comment on. I’ve only recently been introduced, and possess little if any grasp of what the landscape was five years ago let alone ten or twenty. But we know good people are trying to prove him wrong. They put out this zine (and many others), they organize events, they put out tapes, and they continue to stick their necks out for talented artists that would struggle mightily to find an outlet for their craft without New York DIY. With any luck they will continue to do so long after many more pundits declare their project a futile one in an era of constant, rapid change to the landscape of the city.

I only hope that I’ve learned enough so that if a time in the future may come when another fresh transplant falls prey to a completely understandable and innocuous misunderstanding about a venue, I may be there waiting with baited breath to proclaim, “No,” then shaking my head disapprovingly, “it’s the other Shea.” They’ll thank me later.

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I COULD DO BETTER: A GENERATION OF WORKAHOLICS, INSOMNIACS & THOSE WHO ARE GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD by claire dunderman I really like the beach. I like walking along the shore and seeing everyone sprawled on the sand. Everyone in his or her own version of sunshine-y peace. I like watching parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles putting sunscreen on their distracted kids, the little ones ready to dig a hole with hopes of finding treasure. I like watching people going into the surf, throwing the foam into the air with a splash, splash, splash. I like the horizon on the blanket of water and the air whizzing past my ears.

I walk into the surf and I am alone in my section of the beach. I dive into the water and I let it take me out a little, but not too much. I make my body go limp and the water jerks me left, pulls me down, spits me back up. My hair pulls against my head as I let the current decide what it will do to me. I let the water takes me where I should go and, for a moment, I’m not thinking.

When I was a junior in high school, I took AP Language and Composition. The book that we had to read was entitled Overachievers. In it, it follows the lives of several students that are completely immersed in the culture of being “the best” – being the best with grades, exam scores, amount of extracurricular activities. The most polite, the most studious, the most well-mannered. The student that knows exactly when to speak and who to speak to about what. The student that approaches the teacher with specific questions and knows how to pull the correct amount of weight in a group project. The student that plays the game.

There can be many reasons to play the game as a coping mechanism to use an excuse to mask my social phobias. To get better grades. To get into a better school, a better internship, a better reputation. To be a better person. To see the warped opportunistic side of living, the give-and-take, the follow your passions because damn it, you’re an American.

We are agents of the game. We all are. Every time we scrutinize our near-perfect score, our near-perfect project grade. Why couldn’t I have just? Why didn’t I just? I could’ve done this. Why can’t I be perfect? This is our existence. When it was the first week of class, my teacher divided the class into different groups to discuss the book.

“Well, it seems like they’re getting what they want,” said one group member.

“Yeah, they do so much so I need to rethink my schedule,” said another.

My teacher, walking around and hearing this, stopped the class.

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“Okay, we’re going to do a whole group discussion because I just want to address something that I have been hearing.” We rearranged our desks so they were in a circle. We all looked to the inside of the room and our teacher sat near the front of the class. “You do realize that the author is trying to expose the issues with this sort of culture?”

The class then divided pretty harshly. Some agreed with her – that yes, it’s a problem when the character of AP Frank was under a debilitating family dynamic that has put the relationship between him and his mother at an edge. It’s a problem for people to criticize themselves for getting into Brown instead of Harvard. It’s a problem because there’s an air of selfishness added to it. So many people would die to go to Brown. I stayed after and told my teacher that I agreed with her. “I’m just worried that I made it worse,” she said offhand. Something that she didn’t talk about, though, is that those work hard for the sake of working hard.

That maybe it’s not just a game. Maybe it’s the future. Maybe it’s hope. Maybe it’s self-realization. Maybe it’s lying down in your bed looking at your posters of Kings of Leon and Cowboy Bebop and listening to “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen and thinking to yourself, I want to do great things. What do you do with the kids like that?

Last year, I was a senior at Syracuse University. I was a Television-Radio-Film major and Information Management and Technologies minor. In the two and a half years, I have lived in five cities. Before my current job I had worked in four different internships and can’t remember how many airplane rides I’ve been on. I am incredible. I am incredulous. But I am addicted to more.

I grew up in a culture of perfectionism and overachievers. I know several of my friends at Ivy Leagues. They live in cities, beautiful campuses. They work their way into the top programs or manage to secure the top-level jobs. I went from one culture to another, but Syracuse was not as intense. I’d have problems with some friends or roommates whenever I would allow my mind to be over-worked or branch out to more and more groups on campus. “You don’t have to do all of this.”

I’d bounce and bounce and bounce from the next to the next to the next and I’m happy. I’m happy when things are interesting. I need it to be like this. “What’s it going to take for you to care?” What’s it going to take for me to work hard so that I put myself in a financially good place for my family? What is it going to take for me to care more than that? I love working hard. It’s empowering. What do the workers do when it’s labeled as a game? There comes a point when you look up and realize that it really is just one aspect of you. That it isn’t all of you. “I care about you. I want to see you happy.”

These are the words that your friends, your family, those who believe in you say to you.

They see past the hierarchies or the stigmas. They see past what nerdiness or what weirdness you may portray. They see you and they want you to be okay. And you realize that is love. And you realize you can do this.

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