Manifesta: 1) Good, passionate music/art CAN save lives. 2) Everyone’s writing/art/music deserves to be heard/seen/read at least once. 3) We have the right to be heard Fuck Censorship!! 4) We have the right to create our OWN STORY on OUR terms. 5) We refuse to accept corporate, sensationalist, exploitative BULLSHIT as music. 6) We refuse to tolerate bullshit like sexism, homophobia, prejudice, or oppression in art/music. 7) We want to provocative, controversial, and LOUD. 8) We want autonomy over our MINDS, BODIES, and THOUGHTS. [Propaganda is a lie.] NO COMPROMISE. NO SURRENDER. NO FUCKING SHIT. _____________________________________________________________ Contributors: JENN ENDLESS: aerobic organism from the Taiga; ain’t no goddamn sonovabitch. SAKU EGON EVON NIELSEN – tired, coffee-a-holic, stubborn, short-tempered poet. __________________________________________________ AUTUMN
She is the lipstick stain that tastes of cinnamon On the mouthpiece of a spiced chai tea She is the chill of a dampened wooden chair She is the color of the crimson maple tree I want to fall into the colors of her eyes Brown, yellow, with a hint of green And gaze up into the grayest of skies She is the scent of decaying leaves
BY: SAKU EGON EVON
ADVENTURES AT PITCHFORK FEST The pink line train crawled unbearably slow towards its Ashland stop, the train crammed full of other people on their way to Pitchfork. I arrived early and after surviving the check points and pat-downs saw the Orange, Green and Blue stages in their prime before being swarmed by loads of people. I checked out the concessions tents, full of jewelry and records and isolated from humidity by the noisy fans blowing in all directions. Food vendors lined the gravel pathways – Even the Chicago Diner made an appearance. First up was Speedy Ortiz at 1PM; they were the openers on the blue stage. I didn’t make it their early enough to push the hipsters out of the way and make it to the front of the stage. Sadie Dupuis began the show, “thank you for getting up so early when you’re all hungover.” The festival had already played two days, but Speedy Ortiz is worth crossing the city in a daze to see with a vodka-fueled hangover. She picked up her Fender jazzmaster, and her bandmates picked up their instruments. My second Speedy Ortiz show was as good as the first – the band played songs from their LP, “Major Arcana” (including No Below) as well as the “Real Hair EP” released in early 2014. I hung around the stage while the next band, Perfect Pussy, set up, slowing inching my way closer to the front of the stage. All the dudes wouldn’t shut up about how hot they thought the lead singer was (not that she isn’t, but she’s a musician, and therefore, accomplished more in her life than being “hot”). I wasn’t really familiar with the band though because before the first lyrics were sang, the crowd erupted into a massive mosh pit that mostly involved large, sweaty dudes – not a good thing for a stomach still sick on vodka. I practically clawed out of the pit towards the back where I could really notice how bad the monitors were. Loads of bass and guitar but almost no vocals. It took another artist for the blue stage to get their shit together. After a break and some food to stave off vomiting in the hot sun, I returned to the blue stage to see the Dum Dum Girls Show. They started late after the sound engineers spent another ridiculous amount of time fucking with the levels. Hey, some band had to sit there until someone got it right. Between the last show and this one, I managed to get to the front of the stage with some probably high jerk behind me who was madly in love with Dee Dee Penny. They had a look going on with their black clothes and white/cream colored instruments. The bassist Malia James, kind of looked like Kristin Pfaff from Hole. The music was whimsical like dreampop, led by the bassist’s beats and when the singer put down her Fender Mustang and picked up the mic, she wailed. Next up, after another slow break which involved a visit to Mercy for Animals’ tent after being bribed with a dollar to watch their propaganda videos, was Slowdive on the larger green stage. Surrounded by a dusty sandlot and in the golden light of sunset, the music was ethereal but also energetic. They seemed like the loudest band there (or at least they had the presence). Songs like “Machine Gun” slowly build up until the singer, Rachel Goswell’s, sweet voice slithers into the melody. Recordings don’t do the band justice – every shoegaze band MUST be seen live so the maniacal sound effects and rapidly strummed Fender jazzmasters can be appreciated. Last I saw Grimes on the Orange stage, immediately after Slowdive. She moves like a faerie in bleach, blonde hair surrounded by various keyboards and mixers. She really is a one-person band, combining synthesized loops she’d created in the studio with dance moves on stage. I made one last loop at the festival before leaving, checking out the rows & rows of hand-made indie posters depicting hipster bands I’ve never heard of and CHIRPradio’s stand where I scored a free, red reusable tote bag and a CD demo of a local group called Cool Devices. CHIRPradio is seriously everywhere.
NAN GOLDIN Nan Goldin’s first show opened in 1973 when she was 20 years old and displayed her photographic journeys exploring the gay and transsexual communities in Boston. Five years later, she graduated from School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and traveled to New York City where she began documenting the postpunk & new wave scenes as well as the queer subculture and the hard drug culture of the Bowery neighborhood in the 1980’s. Her first book, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, was her first mark on the photography community. Roughly documented about the same time as the Paris is Burning documentary, the project depicted the love, sexuality, abuses and drug use of her circle of friends, and like Paris is Burning, most of her subjects were dead due to the AIDS epidemic or drug overdose by the early 1990’s. Goldin’s technique utilized “available light” – many of her images are flashlit with high ISO. Her photos are intimate portraits of her subjects in bathrooms, bars and beds to depict what she calls a “culture of obsession and dependency.” Her images incorporate high contrasts and shadows in a technique similar to film noir – the portrayal of a murky, bleak mood. One of her most well-known photos is a self-portrait taken one month after being battered. Her left eye is still bloodshot red and bruises circle both eyes. The colors in Goldin’s photographs often follow a complementary scheme, and warm pink is a common hue because of the prevalence light reflections from human skin. Like her subjects and friends, Goldin used heroin and cocaine in the 1980’s. She said in an interview, “I wanted to get high from a really early age. I wanted to be a junkie. That’s what intrigues me. Part was the Velvet Underground and the Beats and all that stuff, but I really wanted to be as different from my mother as I could and define myself as far as possible from the suburban life I was brought up in.” Luckily, she stopped using heroin intravenously at 19, which probably saved her life in the druggy culture of New York and the 1980’s AIDS epidemic. She seems to be one of the few artists, besides William S. Burroughs, whose work wasn’t compromised by heroin use. Nan Goldin pioneered the “Snapshot” style with saturated colors and flash-lit scenes, but she didn’t care too much about prints; they were often covered with dust and scratches. She began working with Cibachrome, but in the contemporary digital era, she says that she doesn’t look at new scanned prints. Her subjects were “bonded not by blood, but by a similar morality, the need to live fully and for the moment.” She’s no stranger to controversy. U.S. President Clinton accused her of promoting “heroin chic” during the fashion’s industry’s obsession in the 1990’s with skinny, blank-looking models, but this bothers her because she says her work isn’t about promoting a fashion trend but honesty and trust with her subjects.
LOCAL BAND INTERVIEW - ¡VAMOS! A couple of broke dudes in a DIY space called PALZIE in Logan Square, on a pretty rigorous schedule of work, play, party, sweat, rinse and repeat, find their bass guitarist downstairs and ¡VAMOS! Was born: if they wanted it badly enough, they could have so much more fun. For those of you who like a mix between noise rock and Mudhoney – fuzzy garage rock. Their video for the single, “Stones”, is what rock n’ roll should be – raw and a little bit fucked up. Ryan took some time out of his busy schedule (gearing up for Riot Fest!) to do a short interview for ZASSHI. What are your biggest influeces? The Beatles, Nirvana, Misfits, Thee Oh Sees, The Nerves, Wipers, Thin Lizzy, Faces, Jawbreaker, Ty Segall, Blood VISIONS by Jay Reatard, Iggy and the Stooges, Bowie, Queens Of the Stone Age, Tame Impala, MOTOWN. and the song Lump by Presidents of The United States and the movie Dumb and Dumber. What is the band working on now? We're gearing up to shoot a music video with SEAN LOFTUS for our Chicago Singles Club Release "DEMON". Really stoked to have Sean direct this one. We've been writing a lot. "Spiderbait" is one that we're all super stoked on. Look for that CASSINGLE this fall. We are planning on re-recording our previous 3 releases and releasing them as an LP on local Chicago Record Label MAXIMUM PELT. Hopefully not getting ahead of ourselves but look for it early 2015. We plan on doing some regional touring coming up. The vans running pretty good and we've been itching to head out east. What is your best show memory? Our best show, honestly..? We probably couldn't remember it if we tried. In most recent memory though, our Tour Kick off back in February with Rabble Rabble, Basic Cable and MelkBelly at the Empty Bottle was too much fun. We had to play Detroit the next day. The first show of a 2 month Midwest/West coast tour. What do you write about in your lyrics? We write about Demons, Girls, Stimulants and the general wacky weirdness of everyday life. How did you pick your name? The name came pretty naturally. We had our first practice in the attic of this spot we used to crash at. We sat down and rattled off names and then Vamos came up. It encapsulated most of our mantras. We agreed. AND IT WAS SO.
CHECK ‘EM OUT: http://www.thisisvamos.com/
POETRY AND JAZZ Poetry and Jazz began with the Great Migration of African Americans from the American South to cities in the northeast, especially in the New York City neighborhood, Harlem.
Black culture began to evolve, in the 1920’s, into
intellectuals who used writing, music and visual art to challenge racism and stereotypes; they were influenced by the rhythms and music of past generations, ancestors of slaves who shared their stories through oral
story-telling and hymns.
The
streets of Harlem were lit up well into the night with shows at the jazz clubs across town.
The artists of the Harlem Renaissance
created a new identity, and this black underground movement began to open publishing houses for new Black writers, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and found musicians like Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith an audience. They expressed new, radical statements, influenced by both the rhythms and subject matter of blues and jazz artists, which later opened discourse for alternative politics – to the later civil rights and even feminism movements. They spoke of equality as something for everyone, regardless of their sociological, ascribed status.
The artists and musicians of the Harlem
Renaissance were some of the first to inspire a political alternative to for marginalized populations against oppression.
Later African American writers,
like James Baldwin, were still interested in understanding their place in the world as Black citizens.
Singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday began
to explore their roles as both women and African Americans in their lyrics (though Holiday’s compositions were definitely darker). Poetry and jazz shifted from racial identity in the 1950’s with the Beat Generation, to spontaneity and freedom.
Writer Jack Kerouac often had musical
accompaniment during his poetry readings.
The Beat Poets were centered in
post-war New York City and San Francisco, and published works by writers and intellectuals [Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and William S. Burroughs “Naked Lunch”] liberalized the publishing industry.
The
works recounted the writers’ experimentation with sexuality, drugs, existentialism, Buddhism and other taboo subjects that ostracized the general American public.
No works before had been so candid or honest.
The Beat Poets
were compared to turn-of-the-century European bohemians and vagabonds, and they vehemently rejected conformity and censorship in their work.
Music of the same era began to differentiate from standard formulas;
jazz
musicians gathered in New York and developed a faster genre of jazz called bebop.
In post-war New York City, virtuoso musicians like Charlie Parker (sax) and Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) experimented with blues scales and dissonant bebop scales that created a new form of jazz that was strange, eerie and intricate. The main body of the songs consisted of “call-and-response” improv solos while the rhythm section kept the beat.
Singers
like Billie Holiday sang about the more traumatic and sorrowful events in their lives; with her beautiful, raspy voice the emotions felt like they were jumping off the turntable. The Beat Poets began to reject societal norms and values in their everyday lives.
They lived for the moment – smoking, swearing, drinking without too
much concern about what ordinary people thought. country or visited foreign countries.
Many traveled across the
In the 1960’s Beat Poets began to gather
in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco, and combined with environmental, peace and women’s movements, became part of the larger counterculture movement of the 1960’s.
In many ways, poetry and jazz paved the
way for larger, progressive movements later on. Much of the development of poetry and jazz occurred in New York, especially during the jazz era, but it also influenced art movements overseas, particularly in Paris.
James Baldwin
even spent several years in Paris as an expatriate writer.
Later on in the
1960’s and 1970’s musicians began to incorporate spoken word into their songs, such as Serge Gainsbourg (French poet, musician and visual artist) and punk legend, Patti Smith in New York City’s Bowery neighborhood (both obviously inspired by genres other than jazz).
Nearly 100 years after the first inklings
of poetry and jazz in New York, coffee houses dot the neighborhoods of urban epicenters across the world – they remain a place where artists can create their own, subculture community, drink tea and/or coffee, listen to jazz and acoustic music, eat baked snacks, possibly smoke their hookah and get up, behind the microphone and read their poetry to a waiting audience.
POEM BY JENN ENDLESS.
PUNK AS FUCK “Lori Meyers – NOFX [Punk in Drublic – 1994]. “Young Crazed Peeling” – The Distillers [Sing Sing Death House – 2001]. “Lucky Guy – The Muffs [The Muffs – 1993]. “Rise Above” – Black Flag [Damaged – 1981]. “Sacrifice” – Flipper [Gone Fishin’ – 1984] “Protest and Survive” – Discharge [Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing – 1982]. “Geek Stink Breath” – Green Day [Insomniac – 1995]. “New York” – Sex Pistols [Never Mind the Bollocks – 1977]. “Teenage Lobotomy” – The Ramones [Rocket to Russia – 1978]. “London Calling” – The Clash [ London Calling – 1979] “Seeing Red” – Minor Threat [Minor Threat – 1984] “Queens of Noise” – The Runaways [Queens of Noise – 1977]
THE LEGEND OF KORRA Why do reality shows and bad-adult-joke cartoons get airtime and shows like The Legend of Korra get kicked off the air? It’s frustrating that a show with beautiful artwork and relevant social commentary doesn’t make any kind of mark with 21st century society. It becomes just another underground trend, but maybe that makes it more special. Just a bit of background for those unfamiliar – the shows centers on “benders” who can telepathically manipulate Earth, fire, air and water through martial arts, and in the series’ world, there are four nations: Fire Nation, Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom and Air Nomads and one “Avatar” who can manipulate all for elements and who maintains balance between people and the spirit world. In the previous series, Avatar, the 100 Years War between the Fire Nation and the rest of the world came to an end, with almost the entire extinction of the Air Nomads. In Korra, the new avatar, after avatar Aang in the first series, must face the terrorist Equalists in Book 1 (Season 1), a power-hungry man manipulating dark spirits in Book 2 and a group of dangerous anarchists, called the Red Lotus, in Book 3. Seventy years after the events of the first series, the events in The Legend of Korra, primarily take place in Republic City, which is the city that Avatar Aang and his friends created to bring the four nations together. It is a fusion of a turn-of-the century city and a sprawling Asian metropolis. Other settings include the artic climates of the Water Tribes, the colorful and whimsical forests of the spirit world, the adobe architecture of an oasis in the desert and the large, social-stratified walls of the imperial, Earth Kingdom capital, Ba Sing Se.
The plot of Korra is set in a rapidly modernizing world, equivalent to the 1920’s in our history, and deals with political and social unrest in a changing world. It makes a lot of relevant social commentary for a cartoon – terrorism with the Equalists in Book 1, power with the antagonism between light and dark spirits in Book 2, secularization with lack of spiritual awareness and angry spirits in Book 2, anarchy with the Red Lotus in Book 3, tyranny with the Earth Kingdom’s monarch in Book 3, genocide with the struggle to revitalize the Air Nomads throughout the series, and organized crime in the capital, Republic City. The artwork in the series is stunning – the frames are created at Studio Mir in Seoul, South Korea where animators use traditional animation techniques (each frame drawn on paper and scanned for digital processing). The show’s creators, Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino, are strongly influenced by anime and art in Asia. Even the plot lines, which feature prominent female protagonists and villains who wish to reshape the world, are similar to popular animes like Sailor Moon, Naruto, and Bleach. The series’ soundtrack mixes traditional Chinese music and early jazz. The show was taken off the air on network television in the middle of its third season this last summer in favor of whatever other crap Nickelodeon’s airing. The network cited the disparity between The Legend of Korra and its other programs as the reason for the show’s removal. In other words, besides Avatar and The Legend of Korra, Nickelodeon hasn’t had good programming since the 90’s. Two last notes – the show has been compared to Hayao Miyazaki’s work (Kiki’s Delivery Service) and Henry Rollins is the voice actor of Zaheer, the leader of the Red Lotus in Books 3 and 4. It doesn’t get more punk than that; so seriously watch the show The fourth and final season, “Book 4: Balance.” Starts Friday, 3 October, and I’m only sad that it’s almost all over.
BRODY DALLE @ BOTTOM LOUNGE, 26 JULY A pink line trains screeched slowly to its stop at Ashland as usual. I climbed off and walked through the shadowy early-evening streets, following the raucous train under the tracks and past boarded up windows and trash in the streets. The Bottom Lounge loomed bright ahead, and some kids stood around the front door puffing on cigarettes. I entered the bar in the front and walked past the 30-something dude verifying our ages. The stage was in back behind two large black doors. The crowd milled in front of the stage, looking for an excuse to get to the front, before the openers, ¡Vamos!, stepped on stage. They kind of reminded me of a cross between Mudhoney and ‘90s noise rock (see band interview in this issue) – a three-piece power trio. They got to open for Brody fucking Dalle, and I’m pretty jealous. After the ¡Vamos! Set, Brody Dalle entered on stage and picked up her telecaster guitar, standing in front of a few pedals on the floor; lead guitarist Tony Bevilacqua walked on with his jazzmaster, taking his place stage left with a massive pedal board and the rest of the band got into place. The band launched into the first song “Underworld” – the room was small, but I could feel the guitars assaulting my ears. The vocals levels sucked though; being front stage, I could hardly hear the grit in Brody’s voice. She looked a bit tired or sick, like the vocals didn’t get their usual raspy screams. As the notes of the first song faded, Brody said into the microphone, “I’m excited to play these old songs for you guys.” One fan shouted, “bitch!” at her. The band played through songs from the Distillers and her new solo album, “Diploid Love.” Unfortunately nothing from Spinnerette like “Ghetto Love” or “Valium Knights.” The tracks from the solo album have more of an alternative feel, like Spinnerette, and some tracks – “Meet the Foetus” (originally done as a duet with Shirley Manson of Garbage) could be Sonic Youth or Slowdive. Brody’s been experimenting with different genres of rock n’ roll, but the band went back as far as the eponymous Distillers LP released in 2000, “The Blackest Years.” At one point, several songs in and sweaty, Brody crouched down on stage while fans ran their hands through her bleach-blonde hair. I had to take some time to admire the colorful star tattoos on her wrists, the red heart with punk scrawled next to it and the sleeve on her right arm. At the show, I ran into a short guy in a leather jacket who somehow managed to sneak a SLR camera up to front stage. I sat up at the front stage with this guy while getting pummeled by a large, drunk girl behind me, practically reaching over my head to touch the monitors. At the end of the show, the guy grabbed a set list for me, ripping it, and a cute roadie guy with dark hair, who’d been backstage, handed me one of Brody’s picks. Outside, waiting for Brody Dalle to walk out until 12:30 AM, the roadie shows up again, hands me another pick, and tried to convince me that Brody’s already left. I didn’t buy it, so I suffered another hour outside while the girl behind me at the show stumbled around out front, belligerently drunk and in tears. I drove 2 ½ hours to see Brody Dalle on my lonesome – was it worth it? Fuck yeah, she’s my punk rock hero. I’ve been using the pick that I got at the show, and I still don’t see any scratches on it – that shit the professional people have is nice. (I gave the other one to a friend). I kind of regret not getting a signature from lead guitarist Tony while he was standing in front of me with his back turned, but I do appear in the picture the roadie guy took backstage during the show – Brody on stage and me in the front row (with my head down, which sucks). At least I didn’t get bitched at for being so near the monitors, like most other venues.
“SAY L’OR VENUS” BY THE PINK SLIPS – REVIEW Los Angeles band, The Pink Slips, has drawn comparisons to early punk-rock and new wave groups like Blondie, but until “Say L’Or Venus”, their only listeners were the audience during live shows at the Crocodile in Seattle and the Viper Room in Los Angeles. The band’s fronted by 17-year-old Grace Mckagan(yes she’s related to ex-GN’R bassist Duff Mckagan) with Keenen Bevens and Trent Peltz. With the release of their first EP, “Say L’Or Venus” on August 27th, I can finally take this rock star’s kid seriously. The band writes some good shit. The EP’s title references the 1990’s Japanese anime, Sailor Moon, which was a girl-centered anime before its time which has recruited fans cnhcluding Grace Mckagan and Frances Bean Cobain (if you haven’t watched it, seriously get on that shit). On the same date as their EP, the Pink Slips released a video for their track, “Foxy Feline.” The first track, “Googlie Eyes,” which makes me think about a princess suicide, was previously released as a live video on YouTube, but the stand-out track is “Foxy Feline” with the whisper-to-a-scream verse that begins, “She’s a femme fatale / she’s a foxy feline,” with nothing but a drum track behind Mckagan’s vocal. The song mixes old-school guitar distortion with a synthesized track that speaks to the Pink Slips’ interests in both punk-rock and contemporary pop in the vein of Sky Ferriera or Grimes. “Say L’Or Venus” is definitely worth its 20 minutes of listening time – it’s got a lo-fi, punk feel that surely benefited from some good advice from dad. The band’s influences are clearly heard and honored. Mckagan’s sensuous voice fills the slower track, “Cruella,” – “Just smoke your cigarettes and clear your throat” – transforms the image of a character from a kids’ movie into a statement about self-destruction. “Just hide your tears and indulge your callous ways.” “Meet You At The Moon” is energetic and seductive. Speaking about her writing process, Mckagan says that David Bowie and Iggy Pop are some of her biggest influences, and when she is writing lyrics she tries to think about how they’d construct songs. She calls her music the beginning of an “Internet Punk Generation,” and it’s a bit ambitious to claim to be the leader of a new movement but perhaps embracing the internet is smart. I haven’t decided yet. In a post shared on the band’s twitter, Sky Ferriera, Hole, Sonic Youth, No Doubt, and Speedy Ortiz were all listed as influences for the new EP – in other words, Mckagan gets her healthy dose of solid female, rock n’ roll presence. For her age (seventeen) Mckagan has managed to combine fantasy and social commentary into something intelligent, and she’s melded pop and punk-rock sentiments into a brilliant mix that doesn’t stab my ears. Obviously, the youth shows at times, but the dark shit just comes with living. We don’t need to spend the majority of our time gloomy anyway. On the final track, “Bratty Attitude,” Mckagan’s voice sounds dangerous. “You can’t tell me what to do / cuz I got a bratty attitude.” What I do know: if I’d made an album in high school, it wouldn’t have sounded nearly this good.
TRAVELLER KIDS [non-fiction] So, I end up somewhere on the West Side of Chicago just as the sun begins to set. I know I’m somewhere near Logan Square and the eerie silence that seems to fill the streets after bar time, but I’m here for the promise of booze and a late night. My friend leads me up three flights of stairs to her apartment, where she’s already got some traveling friends waiting with their dog and pet rat, and already supplied with a bottle of vodka. Sweet. And booze begins to flow; one of the girls pulls out her mandolin and begins to play some songs by the Distillers – City of Angels, Sick of It All and Young Crazed Peeling; she left home, which is North Dakota I think, three years ago to just travel. School didn’t seem to do much for her, and I see her point – it doesn’t do much for me either. You probably learn more about the world from being on the road. First booze run of the night, we crawl up the quiet sidewalks of Artesian street, past a giant, defiled mural of flowers and visit the local Mexican liquor store where nobody asks too many questions (bonus for me, being underage at the time). We pick the cheapest, booziest option, and stock up on several bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 and a mixer for the bottle of vodka waiting back at the apartment. I think the week before the travelers, Sadie with the mandolin, two guys – Hex and Jason – and another girl with her pet rat had been in Las Vegas only a few nights before. They’d all started alone, but met up somewhere in the west, and now had each other’s back traveling along the long, concrete roads that stretch across the United States. About 1:30 AM we run out of booze, cleaned dry, and we gotta make another run. This time the Mexican liquor store is closed, so we keep walking up Western Avenue under the strange, isolated lamps to the nearest Walgreens and pick up a box of that awful Vella stuff. Back at the apartment, wine gets funneled down throats followed by pasta with marinara sauce made in a pan in a tipsy haze accentuated by cigarette smoke – the apartment choking on the fumes. I don’t like sharing a spoon with everybody else, and the same dude keeps asking to bum cigarettes – I’m annoyed. I collapse on the floor, and I’m pretty sure I sat in a puddle of dog piss, but there’s nothing I can do now, except lounge in the nearest folding chair, wet. It’s about 3AM when the one roommate, high on I don’t know what, is suddenly pretty sure my friend’s cheating her out of the rent. One girl hits the other in the face, and they collapse into a card table, bringing a can of coffee grinds with them. All the magnets are knocked off the fridge, and people are slipping over the brown powder on the floor. The dirty punks managed to pull them apart, and I stand in the door-frame, making sure they can’t claw at each other. One girl’s in her bra because her shirt was torn off. Some derogatory slurs are shouted and the roommate stalks off into the night with the rest of the travelers. They’ll probably fall asleep on a curb and find the sun beating down on them the next morning, if a sharp kick from a police officer doesn’t harass them first. Out on the Road; it’s an interesting place, and I need to get out there someday.
VATICAN PITY
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It’s great being 17 and 18 years old because you’re old enough for your parents to not give a shit where you are; you actually believe in something. Kids can run off to the nearest punk house and hang out late into the night in the shittiest part of the neighborhood. Windows are usually boarded up, and there’s garbage in the streets, but one of the shitty houses stands out from the rest because it’s covered in graffiti and spray-painted anarchy symbols. Most days, dirty punk kids are sitting on the railings and stoop of the front porch smoking cigarettes. It’s a diaspora of white kids in a black neighborhood where the poor economic standards of the area are the only ones that would tolerate a house that is such a blatant “fuck-you” to authority. Most of the kids are worshipers of Black Flag, Minor Threat, the Dead Kennedy’s, the Misfits and a traveling gypsy-punk called Hobo Johnny. Are the bands good? Well, that doesn’t really matter. The kids are all here with a common disdain for sexism, racism, homophobia and other institutions. You can be anybody you want there – queer, straight, hardcore, straight-edge. Most people just don’t give a shit, as long as you’re true to yourself. The few people there over 25 years old are a strange sight and wander around the place like tired ghosts. To most people cops are “pigs”, so they organize community events to plant gardens among the shitty, city streets or events that encourage creating art instead of violence. It’s a derelict, industrial town that fell into disarray after manufacturing was outsourced in the 70’s and 80’s, so most kids’ parents are lonesome alcoholics who don’t know what to do with their lives. Sometimes there are middle school kids, eleven, twelve and thirteen years old. It’s kind of strange until you realize the people in this house are a better family than their actual biological counterparts. That’s where punk-rock kids come from – alienation and rejection. At some point, they failed to fit into the regular mold, so they made it a mission to rebel against the norm. For some kids, discovering punk-rock at twelve or thirteen years old, it is the salvation from the alienation – the one thing that could speak to them when popular culture and high school popularity contests made them mildly insane. Punk-rock teaches authenticity and creativity, and tells its followers that they can make a difference if only they have the courage to stand-out. Those punk rock bands playing in the cavern of someone’s concrete basement, covered in spray-painted slogans, they are more than three or four people playing various instruments and screaming – they are an idea – Three or four people who can and will change the world and rid it of ignorance and institutions. There would be a gathering of some twenty-thirty kids, fifty on a really good day, singing to the lyrics of whatever crappy band happened to be in the middle of the floor.
No matter what, the band has to own it. Being technically talented with scales and harmonies and all that shit doesn’t matter if you’re not cool about it. Some people still remain upstairs snorting or smoking whatever they brought along with them. Germophobes beware because a punk-rock house is a community – everything’s shared. The assholes get weeded out fast, though, and they’re not welcome back. There’s always that one perpetually broke guy who’s bumming cigarettes and liquor off of everyone. Back downstairs, a mosh pit has started and skinny, little punk kids with multi-colored hair and ripped, home-made tshirts are getting slammed against the concrete walls. Some small high-school girl with spiky hair and ripped leggings is more brutal than the biggest guy. The girl-guitarist of the next band to play is slumped against a wall with a beer in her hand while her boyfriend, the extremely cocky lead singer, is sticking his tongue down her throat. The drums are a driving beat and the singer is bent over, with his face almost to his knees, screaming into the microphone, usually a cover of a Minor Threat or Black Flag song. The punk-rock basements is adorned with multi-colored Christmas lights, haphazardly strewn between the concrete pillars that keep the wooden floors above from collapsing inward. A big, red “A” is spray-painted on the wall behind the drum kit. There’s the one guy strumming a shitty, thrift-store, left-handed guitar with long, blonde hair like Kurt Cobain and his redhaired, pixie girlfriend on the drums. The blonde-haired kid, probably a high school freshman, is screaming chants into a cheap karaoke microphone. Their bassist is sixteen years old and he just returned from several months of train-hopping and squatting in dog piss, and his gums are already bleeding because of all the cigarettes he’s been smoking. His jacket is more patches than denim, and one of the corners is burned off where he lit himself on fire during the last show. Then the night starts to wind down and kids move upstairs to the “acoustic room”, a windowed, front-room which gives onto the shady street outside with “Think for yerself” scrawled across the archway in Sharpie marker. You just start stepping over the bodies of people who’ve fallen asleep or passed out on the floor, and before you leave, you chain smoke the rest of the cigarettes in your pack. If you don’t smoke them, someone else will bum the rest of them off you. Then, all-of-a-sudden, three or four years have passed, and people are worried about their careers or some shit like that. They succumbed to the brainwashing of their generation, fell victim to what the capitalist, academic and professional worlds told them. They write it off as “teenage ideology” and kids getting fucked up in a squatter pit.
HAPLOID LOVE: PUNK ROCK AND BIOLOGY To all those who say sexism is dead, there’s still women out there who have to bust their ass to get any recognition, and I don’t mean the kind of recognition that labels female achievements as “cute” or “good for a chick” but on a level that puts them at equal standing with the guys. Sure girls are in
bands, but way too many of their bodies are sexualized to appeal to the male gaze or seen as the “hot chick” instead of the “talented woman.” BRODY DALLE is the punk rock chick who will scream, swear and smoke cigarettes like the rest of them. Every time I’ve seen her on stage or in a music video, she’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, running around on stage like her bandmates. When she was a teenager in Melbourne, Australia she and her band, Sourpuss, toured with other alternative and punk acts in the 1995 Summersault festival across Australia. She played up on the same stages as Sonic Youth and Rancid at 15 years old. She met Rancid frontman, Tim Armstrong and married him when she was 18 and relocated to Los Angeles where she started the Distillers. With her harsh voice, she was compared to Courtney Love and PJ Harvey. Later, when the Distillers fell apart, she formed Spinnerette with long-time friend and guitarist, Tony Bevilacqua and then released her own solo record, Diploid Love, in 2014. Brody sums up her position as a musician, “They say women can’t play guitar as well as men. I don’t play
guitar with my fucking vagina, so what difference does it make?” She’s my fucking punk rock hero. Probably more difficult to enter – the world of science. KARI BYRON ended up on Mythbusters by accident when she was used as a model for an early episode of Mythbusters which grabbed the attention of the producers. She’s used her influence on television to encourage girls to remain interested in science, especially within the social pressures of high school. Byron didn’t initially plan to have a science career – she graduated with a BA in film and sculpture from San Francisco State University. After spending a year backpacking through India and Southern Asia, Byron returned, searching for a way to make her sculpting skills function in the working world. Her background knowledge of film, special effects and sculpting meant she was used to using tools, and she started work at the Mythbusters workshop for free in order to get noticed. She and co-hosts Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci were given their own segment in the show.
Byron stated that when she hears comments about her only being on Mythbusters because she’s attractive, she dismisses them because she knows she has worked hard to be where she is. “People tend to think of welding and fabrication as being tomboyish but I'm actually a girly-girl that loves high heels. I love getting my hands dirty and getting dressed up.
KISS/DEF LEPPARD
I went to the KISS and Def Leppard show at Alpine Valley this summer because I figured I should see some of the classic greats, you know, before they’re dead. That night the orange, plastic chairs at Alpine Valley were filled with dudes ranging in age from forty to sixty who had brought their very bored, apathetic looking children along for the show. I can relate – going to a rock show with my dad would probably be pretty lame. The Dead Daisies from Australia opened up the show; they were an alright hard rock band combined of the rotating members of famous ‘80s rock bands (the replacement members of the classical lineups). At least these guys have FINALLY started their OWN band. The members had at various times played for GNR, INXS, Thin Lizzy, and Ozzy Osbourne. They definitely had the old skool rock n’ roll look – tight, black pants, long hair, tattoos, scarves, and the bassist held his bass exactly like Lemmy. The crowd looked so bored though. It sucks being the opener, and opening before the sun goes down. Nobody’s nearly drunk enough. Next up was Def Leppard; they’re still pretty good as far as glam metal goes. They have some newer stuff which I’m pretty sure nobody recognized – the radio hits from Pyromania and Hysteria (released in 1983 and 1987) were the crowd pleasers. I could get into them (because who doesn’t like loud, fast rock n’ roll) until the ballads. Those songs are one part of the 1980’s I think the world wouldn’t mind forgetting. Their instruments sounded and looked better than their 1980’s MTV music videos (I’m kidding, the ridiculousness of the 1980’s visuals is what make movies and music videos from this era so fucking great), and the vocalist’s got a gritty, rock voice. And then there’s KISS. I don’t think I’ve ever actually listened to a KISS record just for the hell of it; the allure of KISS is all the stage antics. Not necessarily bad – it’s their thing. It’s not the most groundbreaking music or the kind of stuff that’s going to change your life. It’s the stuff your dad probably listens to when he’s gonna get drunk. The band does pretty much the same thing they do in all the videos you’ve seen of them – space-creature costumes, face paint, synchronized guitar playing between Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and the guy who’s supposed to be Ace Frehley, up-down-up-down-up. It’s fun to watch the first time with the lights, fireworks and blood pouring down from Gene Simmon’s enormous tongue. At some point, Gene Simmons and his bass went flying up to the top of their rig and played bass from the top, and Paul Stanley’s boot went flying past my head towards a random platform elevated in the middle of the crowd. Ace Frehley’s replacement started shooting firecrackers out of his guitar, but do to a series of unfortunate events, I missed the fireworks finale at the end of the show and the only KISS song that I like, “Rock N’ Roll all Nite.” Being a fan of 1980’s metal, I gotta say the highlight of the night was Def Leppard. However old they are, their show is still pretty energetic and the vocalist is still on top of his game. Thinking about 80’s rock bands, I couldn’t help being sad though when I realized that I’ll never get the chance to see Guns N’ Roses on that stage, Alpine Valley, which happened to be the first stop of their “Use your Illusion” tour in 1991. It was the one show to which Axl Rose apparently showed up on time. And no, I don’t want to see Axl Rose and whatever band of misfits he might have on stage with him now…
jENN eNDLESS^