Note to the underground

In this current issue due to a funny mistake under my header in the space where i should ramble there is another columnist’s piece on, well I haven’t seen it yet, but probably it's about japan, finnish punk or squatting around London. So yeah only my broken face is featured in #361. Although I had sent in my writing and already have a new one (that was supposed to appear in #362). But not to lose anything my columns as well as my blog will be in a month delay due to this minor thing. Putting together the magazine is a hard work so I don’t blame anyone. I luv them. It’s more like how unlucky I am.

#360

Almost three months in this year and one of my first favorite memories by far and not just exclusively from this is year tripping on mushrooms in my living room with a friend who was sticking herself into our sofa while we tried to figure out what this weird NUTS fanzine poster is supposed to be that hangs on my wall and that scared look on my flat mate’s face because he was our lookout. Poor guy at one point we pretended we trip that he is made out of cheese and we will fucking eat him. Fun times. He did not end up in a fondue. 
How much do we have to wait? The new PISSED JEANS is so good but it came out at Sub Pop just as BEACH HOUSE did. Another band I love but for different reasons. We can love bands like the KINKS and such cause time made it irrelevant to care about their economic surroundings. They made money and probably in some fancy drug daze they have treated women shitty or beaten the shit out of boys on expensive hotels. And yes Kinks never said they are associated with punk thus they never really backstabbed anyone. Just as Obama never said he is punk he just sounds too close to a HAVE HEART song filled with esoterical bullshit. Still we blame him. But my friend was right Honeys sounds like the agony of a heroin addict who is choking in his own puke on a burning mattress. I know filthier records for sure but it’s just one that you feel that’s fine enough. It’s a record that cleans all the other dirt or just puts them under the rug so you don’t care about it. It’s filth that covers treasure. And it is set in an office environment. Hope someone will explain that this is total corporate bullshit and as Family Guy makes racism kinda ok and funny or decreasing it to a level of not such a big deal because it’s a part of our everyday life and personalities thus shoving it down in our throats Pissed Jeans’ rants against having an office job just making us believe it sucks but since now you can relate to it this could help you then because it doesn’t suck that much cause after all you can tell yourself ‘wow this is me as well and me is good songs after all’. In a way this makes it easier to me to find a job where I don’t have to swallow dust all day and be in cold. So maybe they have evil intentions but for me they just coated sugar on shit and I believe it’s marzipan. I could just think about from a CRO MAGS song now I’m turning my life into a Pissed Jeans song. But my friend who just started working at a company where she has nothing to do all day just stare and look busy, she say it’s the worst. Don’t know hopefully will find out. All I know is that lately I’m hooked on food porn what I watch for eating veggie filled sandwiches and I have the desire again to buy records and I just bought a REALLY RED lp for like 40 dollars which was basically a good deal still I rather buy music than actual records so it is a 30 year old oval shaped plastic thing on my shelf being more worthy with every day passes by but I felt good when the music was blasting and it felt like the price was fair cause this record is that cool. Actually I bought the record on the same day we took mushrooms. I paid for my fandom, for the music not for the time it has been existing and not for how rare it is but for that now I feel even with them. Still it’s a lot of money especially here, especially for me. But anyway. Luckily it seems I will receive some free music in the upcoming months so let the money roll. Never thought such things could happen to me at one point – getting free shit - and today I even made a deal on I will get paid over having free tickets if I write about the upcoming SWANS show. I’m still not planning to be a writer cause that profession is lame. It’s not good when your sacred thing what you like to do for fun becomes the thing you have to do so you can buy food and keep your apartment. Job seeking is hell especially if you feel like you are a stupid 16 year old who have to prove himself to adults in a cruel second world country with a fucked up market. But since the gates are open now I only care about the upcoming national record swap where I wanna throw money out on everything. First THIS HEAT lp? Gimme that shit along with some NEU!. Guess I will just find and buy some Kinks records or if Sid Vicious will be with me NEW ORDER or BUZZCOCKS. But This Heat and Neu! are music that is fucking weird but simple cause I can understand it as well. Like SWELL MAPS. Music from instinct. Those tribal kinda sounds and noises of our surroundings, let it be nature or just a flat with dripping water pipes and a bouncing heating system. When music surrounds you and it’s not just, ‘this-is-the-beginning, here-comes-a-bridge, that’s-the-chorus-and-that-was-the-end’. When each titles just mark the minutes and songs are blending into something cohesive when music is a tool like actual music not the lyrics but the sounds and they are used for representing nature, people, feelings, everything. These sounds help me appreciate many other bands who are more classical in their music writing method. There I could find in some of their rhythms and brief noises and feedbacks a whole world. Probably I’m projecting my beliefs on these minor moments of sounds but I don’t care about truth when it comes to be entertained because I can believe in my own universe. It’s like being under the influence of mushrooms you just believe it and you feel happy then cause it seems so real like not just being different but another. I fell in love with aspirin feast while I toke a stroll to a grocery store this night through the rain soaked streets. Had no idea they were around at the end of the 80s and begging of the 90s. The 90s seem to be miss known in many heads including mine to be all about over the edge shitty bands in almost every music and acts like born against saved the whole decade. As always when you know something universal sooner or later it will turn out the only thing you should be sure about is you are dumb as fuck. Good thing about our culture is it’s full with hidden gems that makes everything fresh and permanent cause something that has been recorded even before we were born could sound like something that haven’t been existed until now when we hear it. Just take DEATH. They have appeared from out of nowhere and with their amazing we do what we want because what we do is right-ish jams they made us wonder what if this would always appeared in the history of punk thus it would have formed the then future now past bands into different directions. But they just become the best band that has never mattered cause we have forgotten them and when they came back everybody was enthusiastic like it’s a fresh band that just got together a year ago.
Not just trips on substances make me siked but trips to buy veggies. I went to the market for Jerusalem artichoke and brussel sprouts and beets, food I’m obsessed with nowadays, in beautiful spring weather. That made me feel like, everything is kinda shit lately in many parts of my life but sometimes if I change my focus and other aspects of this whole it could make me appreciate life then even if sometimes i feel sad but i see something or encounter something while I’m out that is just good, like a painting on a wall, a tree, how the clouds are, someone who does something, something that belongs to nature but included in the universe and I just feel that after all this life and this planet is not that bad. Because there are those little things you just lose yourself in them and even if it's just for a moment then it feel infinite. And I just felt right buying all the food and walking around and taking the tram and thinking about what will I cook and how I will send my mom the recepies, along with my ideas on the movie that is the topic of our weekly film club. I was listening to the first Sods lp while I was on my way din gall these and it just grabbed me. I spent a lot of time the week before reading about how lame Iceage is. I know, I have seen them and then the magic just disappeared even if i got hooked before the first lp came out and a bit after it as well. But SODS is just sooo better and not just because they are earlier or because unlike being a novelty act they could morph into SORT SOL and still could keep their goodness but because even Minutes To Go is just a brilliant record that ranges from sharp kbd punk hits through weird fucking cold punk that sounds like machine man are gifted with hearts and now bothered by the reality of how being a human kinda sucks screaming for their desired love and there’s a desperate dub-ish song that is more violent and desolated than SPECIALS’ Ghost Town but about the same topic and it just stomps my head with the feelings of this record is still relevant and it ends with so many crazy guitar jams what are just worming in my brain around and around forming an infinite sign. So good. There are too many records that by time could grow on me and the treatment i get from weird music that makes me appreciate music in the different way like MEAT PUPPETS’ Up on the Sun which is like proto DESTRUCTION UNIT’s second era krautrock in the desert but unlike Destruction Unit, Meat Puppets go nowhere, it’s just perfect sitting around getting high music (inserting a quick critique here I like Sonar better than Void, I mean the record, not the band cause i love VOID over everything but pizza) and WIRE’s Chairs Missing. I always was Pink Flag and later dance-able era but yesterday finally I sat down and realized what kind of amazing thing Chairs Missing is.  Used to with being that weird lullabies song like Sound on Sound or crazy hit like Gilbeau. Feels like sooner or later every good band’s every record will just turn out to be right. But I don’t wanna like jazz era SACCHARINE TRUST. And i was listening to fucking classical music lately but thanks to the guitar sound of KORO i couldn’t really dig myself into it too deeply. But I’m kinda afraid I’m getting close to understand jazz and i hate this. Cause naturally I think we need things to hate on. Some opposite to what we believe in. I don’t wanna wind up like that dude who thinks there are two kinds of music good and bad. But it’s not true, you never should become objective when it comes to things that could be liked or hated. That’s the end of everything either to not care enough cause professionals are cold headed or not care because who gives a fuck. Irony and apathy are the enemies for sure.
I rather be that guy who thinks SUPER WILD HORSES is amazing and their debut lp is still on my playlist. It’s a record only could be made by girls. So cool, so dreamy and it gives us a sight into a secret better world. With all their small moments that they share you can feel people are really there, their secrets, their lives, their nights with falling asleep in coats half drunk at parties on dirty sofas and that slashing cloudy guitar sound that embraces me while I swing on my sofa hitting my thigh and smiling into my beer. The fucking spring is here and I have to have it in my head as well.
also I think I’m doing too much stuffs cause last night I have seen Get Him to the Greek and it felt like I’m watching some Hanake movie and I almost cried.
My friend just put out his solo d-beat record ( http://diskobra.bandcamp.com/ ). This is the end.

how i spent my 420

I photobombed the michel houellebecq book signing. and i made myself a sandwich

# 359

So I live in Budapest mostly because I’m Hungarian. I tried to avoid telling this fact about myself but it seems like even some nice Russian guy have figured it out who wrote cool things about me on the internet. - I did not google my name this time it was a friend of mine - That’s the deal when you read Eastern Europe in my columns. You might have thought of that I’m polish and imagined my location to be grey and smell like cabbage but actually it’s totally dark and stinks of moonshine.
One of the few good things about being Hungarian is I can read whatever Laszlo Krasznahorkai writes. - Actually it’s Krasznahorkai Laszlo, as my real name is Vargyai Viktor. We use a switched order -. And there is no need for a middle man as a translator between us so not only his thoughts are reachable for me but also the selection of the words in his never ending sentences. I’m kinda obsessed with him lately and reading now one of his books called War and War made me wonder on the whole thing. It’s about this guy who goes crazy and travels from a small rural town in Hungary to New York because he thinks that’s the center of the world in this modern age. There he stays in a small room and creates a homepage about his message he feels like he has to share with eternity. The funny thing is about it is how we Hungarians are really alike. Even if we are at the center of the world we just stay in our dirty holes and think about the whole universe and we feel like whatever we are doing is soo important the whole world should know about it and when it’s done things will change. It also made me realize too something I already wrote in one of my columns. After all we all just live in rooms so why does a country matter that much?
Sadly it matters so much in some aspects. There are unseen lines what are drawn deep into us. There is distance and that’s the worst. The worst is when the distance between two places is not can only be counted in length. Actually the worst is when there is distance between you and the whole universe even if it’s just a small fucked up town where you’ve been tragically stick in.  
The room I used to live in faced a hill and in one of it’s bushes during the winters there was always fire burning. People lived there and it felt shattering to witness how just in few meters – aka. length in Europe - there is another world that is completely different than what I live in. Mine is about surviving the soul crushing reality of capitalism that sooner or later turns you into a lame adult their is to just survive life that has turned it’s back on them. I could see them and they might have seen me as well if they cared at all about those block of flats where my family owns a home. There was a border between us and at their end is the place everyone is afraid to end up.
It was also strange when I arrived to the states there was a line which till I haven’t stepped over I was afraid of and then I entered another world as I walked through. There are lines drawn by markets, politics, cultures languages, fortunes. And for some reason some people always just wanna be at the hot spot of these best circumstances.
I always believed the center of the world is where we feel good. And there are places for sure from where you should run away but there are situations you should run to or realize them around you and then stick to. A drunk dance in a bar is a drunk dance everywhere. It matters who does that and how and when and what you feel. There are those rooms. We are in them. And we should create and reach for the world to grab it and make it our own. But after all what matters is this nation less and universal thing: doing something or better doing something together. Creating and sharing. I got hugged at a weird birthday party in Berlin of some legendary german fast core band’s drummer where while most people were snorting cocaine I was talking to a really elfish looking Swedish guy who was a traveler. I never felt like I should move or anchor myself to the road thus I told him I look on places as if you don’t like them instead of escaping them you should try to make them better. With finding people with whom it will be better or just try and it will follow. Or realize there are things all around us that needs no place, time or culture. These things can’t go through google translation just through you. Like the noise of VOID. That blasting amazing sounds which come along with lyrics but you can understand one’s frustration even without the slightest knowledge of English as well. As we do non Italian speakers with WRETCHED.

Nowadays I love music or people who do things which are happening in rooms. Locked rooms where they are creating something that could not be held back. What launches them out into the world. When the world comes to your room to see what’s happening there. When from a hidden position from a beaten situation people rise up and do something undeniably good. When they become needed and thus free. Or they just feel good cause they have made it as they do what they want because they haven’t listened to anyone telling them what they can or cannot do. Aren’t they the real center of the world?
But after all like what is the center of the world? Is it Olympia? With all of it’s crazy, drugged out love jams and garden hardcore rippings all in a feedback mist? Haven’t you wished to live there in a long haired commune in some unlocked door punk house?  Was it Switzerland with the Hot Love era dozen perfection bands? Who recreated or reclaimed post punk, proto weird music? All those cold melodies which are still making our hearts warm?  With their own Joe Strummer aka the genius Rudolph Dietrich? Is it Tampa Florida with all the CULT RITUAL connected bands? Their noise, their beauty, their unstoppable and uncountable force of pure teenage angst? Or was it Italy with its totally fucked up mutant hardcore bands? Brazil? Spain? Washington DC? LA? People put these places on maps and you wish you would live there. But it always had to be people - the same part of nature you likely are too.
I live in Budapest and it has 2 million residents. San Francisco doesn’t have a million but there were more punks at every show, there is MRR, and every band I saw could play their instruments. They had amazing places, record shops and the whole city has a history. As just yours and everyone else’s but maybe it’s so far unwritten.   
But yeah as always it’s not this easy. And some people just wanna get by with life not ride it into a tamed horse. There come all the unseen lines made up by the always cruelty of this unequal world. Cause yeah you could even find your joy under the circumstance of poverty but most of us just wanna not be bothered with striving to get enough money for food or being afraid of losing our rooms. It’s like we would like to buy stuffs but we enjoy being ditch diggers. To wear patches that not only hold our cloths together but as symbols of stating it’s still us vs them. We are survivors of not joining a war. A meal is good if you prepare it with passion and patience not only at fancy restaurants. I go to the market where a top chef goes too and the veggies are cheap as well. But I know I’m in a better situation than so many people. And I see my friends in struggle with their conscience when they have to choose between free times or some fucked up corporate job. And how those who choose not to grow up rather choose to sooner or later go broke. It’s never the money we miss. We miss the privilege where we could afford to be poor but still not have to be in a class struggle.
Guess I’m lucky for this cause even if I still feel the lack of stability with a better job I have million things that keep me forget the danger that’s in the corner of my everyday’s. I can entertain myself and i want many of my friend to be part of this as well. I’m just sometimes scared. Because if I had a job that pays me good then with all the other things I do I would feel like I made it. And if I made it that would mean it’s the end. I don’t feel ready for that. I’m 26 but I feel like I’m 16. Also I’m afraid with the chance to grow up I will stop wanting to be young. Not to not be able to do my things but not want to do them on the first base. I remember I wanted to leave Hungary only for to see better shows and have better chances to entertain myself. Now I wanna stay here forever cause I have found so many good people with whom we make amazing things. Now with a friend of mine we booked almost all of our contemporary favorites to play here. But it’s heartbreaking how my friends tell me they are happy cause we are doing things but they wish we will carry on. But it’s me who want them to carry on. I want to trust them. Because when we book a show we not only book it for ourselves we book it cause we believe many people will come and it will be a great night of punk joy.
I really hated the movie Children of Men for the same reason everybody loved it so much. The backgrounds. With all those immigrants kept in cages waiting to be deported back. And I have no idea how is it to be an immigrant, how is it when even with the risk of being deported back and before that to be kept like an animal feels. And my rage comes at the point where I can’t understand this fucking world why is it making people to choose this? But at the same time I just feel that many people just go to live elsewhere cause they are running away from themselves and the real tragedy is what I just wrote that even millions of people can’t decide and then rise up to make a country or just a town more livable so they run away to live like rats but to live. It’s just so upsetting. It’s upsetting how people lose their cities and their abilities to live but still I believe in fighting. A fight to block out this fucked up world. To build a better one even among and within ourselves. Cause sadly or not, not everyone could live in that one city and this is why I hated Children of Men. It simply sold the idea that there are only like four cities in the whole world worth to live in.   
For a reason we all want to be elsewhere. Henry Miller’s Air-Conditioned Nightmare starts with a conversation between him and a Hungarian friend of his. That friend is happy now cause he always wanted to live in New York and now he does while Miller wonders away to Budapest. Budapest was then governed by some semi fascist regent and we were in a flow that led right into Second World War. Still he wanted to be here. We envy each other’s places. While being in the US people who toured Western Europe were complaining how there punks criticize Americans because they think punk is so easy for them yanks. While in some western countries squatters get extra money if they own dogs. People have to face community service if they smash a brick into a cop’s face while in San Francisco you got shot if you don’t have a bus ticket and you run away from cops.
What I envy in people is the extra energy. The power and will to carry on. It’s in abroad but it’s in every town. Those crazy people, who sit down, anchor them to somewhere and just do their things. Maybe they are legends, maybe they are nameless. But still they are cornerstones of the scene. Even if you are not one of them you are a part of their work too if you just help them with your existence. This magazine could be put out cause you have bought it. A show is just some crazy dude who wrote an e-mail to a band to perform in a room without the audience. A band is just some people making noise at a room without listeners. We are all part of it and we all need each other. We are in this together. And we are everywhere. For some reason from a line, people are different, they speak different, act different, live different but still there is something that makes us stick together instantly even if we were raised different and somewhere else. I love this. I love that I’m a part of this magazine from the other end of the world from a shady room. But I love it more that I can always write about my friends, about what is happening with us and I love that you whoever you are can maybe understand this all. Cause even english is not being my first language maybe my thoughts could go through these lines.
So this all was not against moving. Mobilization is one of the best things ever. Whoever decides to leave their town for a better life and start it all over again are the strongest people. But sometimes you have to look from what you run and where you run to. While I could be better elsewhere I lie myself into believing I’m a do-er. Thus I sit on my ass and try to do things. Cause after all maybe Krasznahorkai was right when he got asked if he feels better in Berlin. He replied: No. But it’s not Berlins fault. He is hungarian and he is destined to not feel good anywhere. 

#358

I have started writing this column on the 30^th of December at 1 am. Guess I will finish this a week after the deadline deep in January. Whatever. My birthday is coming up. It’s on the 3^rd of January. I will turn 26 which means it’s 4 more years till punk death = 30 (it means you will come to a point when you realize you have been punk through half of your life even if you’ve joined in the last minute which is the age 16 and you have to decide to either carry on and disappear with honor). January 3^rd. Same exact day Nietzsche went crazy after he saw a person beat a horse into almost death. On that date Hitler’s father died which is kinda funny if I think about it, my dad shares a birthday with Hitler’s death day. Both of us look like we are jews while we are not. Also my first band (who were supposed to play it’s first show on my 16^th birthday but got delayed to one week further) broke up on my father’s birthday and on hitler’s death day. It’s just my sentimental mind that makes such a big deal out of dates not that I have the agenda to point out that there is some cosmic thing about me and nazi leaders. I still am just some regular dude who maybe thinks too much about the whole universe.

I have a roommate but our flat is just one room. I ordered him to set up a surprise party for me otherwise I will throw him out to the streets. Cause for sure I’m just like everybody else I want surprise parties every year and also survive my funeral and see how people have realized since I’m gone they kinda loved me. I only had one birthday party and maybe I had it cause I share the same birthday with one of my best friends. So he had a birthday party and I was invited as well and I got a cake too. I almost had an amazing birthday once.
I was a freshman in high school and just got into punk in the sense of that I have started to go to shows in every 3 months and also posting on local message boards controversial bullshit to have beefs. There was a festival on my birthday with all the best local bands who I loved then. Two of them were raised me in a way. And we were supposed to go there with all my norm friends and a girl from my class who looked beautiful, listened to NOFX and she was kinda sweet to me (she ended up being a junkie).

Everyone quit on me early afternoon. So from the best possible night of my then so far life by a second it turned into the worst shit ever. I locked myself into my room and was just blasting one of the bands’ - that played that night - cd on full volume and sang along to the lines like “if they say life is a crime then I’m innocent cause I wasn’t happy not even for a day”. While I cried. My mother freaked out because she is just a person who cares so she asked my brother to sacrifice his Saturday night and be my entourage or more like my driver and security guard for that show. She said I can’t be depressed on my birthday. But she also thinks no one should be depressed at any time, even if she always tells me she is depressed – luckily she isn’t really. My brother dug out some of his most worn out cloths as camouflage and we went for the show. He got bored quick so we only watched two and a half bands and the half band was the band that changed my life and also it shared members with my then future band and the friend with whom we share the same birthday. Also the band I was blasting in the solitude of my temporary teenage tragedy I shared membership in two bands with one of the members and soon i will help him out on bass for his solo D-beat project band.

That night was kinda magical. The place was in a total blown out part of the city. Many scary people: Strung out bums, aggressive skinheads, random low life people. My brother stayed in the back and I lost myself in the crowd. The whole event was like finally I stepped into a place where I have belonged. It was full of excitement and addictive danger. I saw many things that night that was new but I understood them. It was the same frustration I had, the same need to be somewhere where you feel finally at home. When you feel like finally you are close to something important. Where you can disappear to be found. It was something I could describe but it wouldn’t make any sense to people who wasn’t there even if they would understand my words.

A decade later after a Neon Piss show here in our town we were sitting outside the venue drinking beer and smiling. Discussing with friends that if we have gone to work tomorrow what would have we said. That we went to a show. But it was at a rehearsal room at an industrial site. Where only 40 people came but the whole room was dripping in sweat and happiness and spilled out beers thus it felt like the whole world is in that room. The crowd was half naked even some girls, that we were hugging each other and due to this at some point everybody lost track of where their bodies end and other people’s start. It was just beautiful. While it was the same thing, the same thing that is still fresh. The same thing that I have finally found that night 11 years ago.

In the unstoppable force of the crowd when my favorite local band played and it was just loud and beautiful and so true. The singer who’s now my friend was singing so loud it woke me up for days. We left at half of their set and I remember sitting into my brother’s car I felt like I’m in a bubble and this will protect me. That bubble has expanded and now it’s full with friends, and memories, and achievements. Like last night on my birthday where I got a fanzine with many of my friends saying amazingly sweet things about me, about how they see me and about how we are in each other’s lives. And fuck I think I’m kinda bipolar cause it is changing in me always that either I feel amazing for no reason or terribly shitty for no reason. But maybe they are right and everything is possible and we will make it.

It’s just weird. I hate education but love learning and thinking so nowadays sometimes I read philosophy mostly on Wikipedia and then think for myself. Probably this made me realize things or worse and due to I’m stupid as fuck I project these badly understood ideas on my life. Anyway I spent this afternoon with hanging with my friends, ate a lot, made out with an amazing girl then met for a birthday dinner with my ex girlfriend to eat ramen and soup dumplings, strolled with her a little bit, had couple laughs, said our good byes then I started listening to Neu!, toke a bus ride and started reading my birthday gift which was the fanzine. And started crying on the bus. Came home finished the rest. Not all my friends wrote into this. And it was weird who were some of the people who did but instead of feeling that I lack some people here I just started recalling all the amazing things that have happened to us, with us and how I love some people and how much they did for me. And fuck one of my all time favorite band Cloak / Dagger just made a picture for me with all of them greeting me with pizza and moonshine. This made me think on something else as well.

One of the most influential people from the Bay Area scene and maybe from all over the world has just passed away in the recent past. I have never met Sarah Kirsch although one of my best friends played with her in many bands and she was his best friend. When I read the news I did not know what to do. I just felt that there’s a friend at the other end of the world and he is in a big loss and I just can’t help him now. I can’t be there for him cause when someone dies it’s the people who are still alive and in grieving matters. It was amazing in a way how many people reacted with telling their appreciation on how much Sarah did for them, for her city for her community for our community that is international punk. And it was Robert from MRR and Terminal Escape was who said these sort of things should be said to each other while we are alive. So I wrote a letter to my friend and I told him how much I miss him, how much he did to me and how much I’m sad for his loss. And what else could and should we do to make life better for the living? For us. Mostly for ourselves because that’s the person we have to stay with for the most. And If you get appreciated just hang on for that. Keep it true even after you have received someone’s love. Just try cause the good things should start at one point.