let them be punks

Sometimes when our heads are too far up our own asses, even when we are right we are just right in our own situations.  Despite the much-talked-about global-ness of punk, and despite all the politics, it’s still a scene with so many fucked up assumptions—but for a lot of us in other parts of the world, they’re not the one’s you may think.

One of my old bands once got a review that praised us but also said he expected something worse because of our nationality. I didn’t get it racist cause we Europeans are like this. Al Burian wrote about one of my other bands that we could be huge in Europe if we were Americans. Look, your location matters. Saying otherwise is a lie. If you live in the Northwestern part of Europe you can reach four-to-six different countries within few hours that get ‘big coverage’ in the punk press. You play a decent show in Germany and the message boards will be all over you. Then you’ll be able to tour the whole of Germany. Later some label will want to release your records, you’ll have cool live shots of your gigs all over the place, some youtube videos and that’s it. You made it. This sounds so cut-and-dry professional but it’s true. We are somehow this professional.

But it’s not just punk rock marketing—your location matters in how all of us do our punk as well—and on every level: as fans and as participants; how we consume and produce our music; our perspectives and our ethics.

What I will talk about now is the arrogance in punk rock—or more specifically, arrogance in ‘first world’ punk rock, because there is a difference. And when it’s on it’s blind as fuck. An easy example is how nowadays with gourmet food being all the rage, these gastro nazis could make you feel bad if you are not eating food that is in the best quality or prepared as it’s done in a top restaurant. But you have to eat, otherwise you die. And if you are punk you have to be punk, you have to put out, you have to get, you have to go. But for some of the most die-hard ‘punks’ I run into, animal rights is important as long as they can consume the same exact taste that is made out of something without a nervous system. Watch them try to teach a poor person (or poor punks for that matter!) in my country how to eat healthier or more ethical—it’s totally embarrassing!

Sometimes it’s really just more important what we do than how we get it done. There were bands on the road way before emails, not just before Facebook, but it also wasn’t usual that your friends could go out on tour with only a demo or an EP and sleep around squats and eat overcooked pasta with ketchup. It’s cool if I type in Sex Vid into google and the only thing I will encounter is making me wash my hands 5 minutes later, but who needs internet when the biggest fanzine in the world is your devoted fan? It’s easy to play the ‘I don’t care’ card when the world cares about you. There’s a whole made up genre of bands who are hard to trace but got the hype. It’s easy not to say a word when everyone is just waiting for you to speak.

But if you never were on the map then you’ve been born invisible. I have booked three tours by myself through long months, a million e-mails and bending over maps with a gas calculator and many of the shows went through friends whose bands I’ve booked here in my town. But without social network sites we couldn’t have ever kicked off. Without Myspace or Facebook I couldn’t have booked bands that helped me later, and whose members have become my good friends. And yet this a total first-world luxury to be able to eschew these things and say “fuck Facebook” and try to exist “under the radar” and still be able to tour, put out music, etc. 

The fixation with the format of our music is another example of this ‘let them eat cake’ mentality. Look, I get it. Vinyl is punk and tapes are coming back as well. CD is crap, MP3 is slacking. And it’s true. As an owner of some vinyls I agree—they are great and they are the best. They are magic. And to be honest it was a painful job when I spent three days cutting worn out mix tapes to the same exact length or to dub our demo over days-worth dubs of MTV’s 120 Minutes, but they looked awesome and I was proud of my work. I always looked on our CDs as crap but that was our only chance!

Because you know what? Here where I live there’s no vinyl making. Because the industry—like everything else in the communist-era—was owned by the state, so after the collapse the record plants got shut down and never reopened. And it’s actually illegal here to make and sell materialized records if you don’t register your songs. So even old farts who are somehow equipped to make you 12” plastic discs in their basements for a ridiculously high price are scared cause you have to ‘own’ your songs first. But who wants to do that? The closest place to get records pressed otherwise is the Czech Republic where if I order 500 copies of 7” (which I will never sell cause I’m in an unknown band from eastern Europe) I have to pay like 4 dollars each!  That’s a lot of money here! And we didn’t even start talking about the cost of the cover and packaging! Then consider I also live far from bigger (read: richer) cites and have to work a lot so touring beyond 1 or 2 weeks means loosing my job or I just simply wont eat for the rest of the month. We don’t have a label cause we can’t tour that much so no one knows about us, or really would care because, again, we’re from an unfashionable place in the eyes of the tastemakers...  I could go on and on, but I don’t want to make this a sob story about me…

So when someone says they don’t listen to CDs cause it’s way too easy to make, I get fucking angry. Yeah, burning a CD is an easy job, but writing the songs that are on that shinny fucking plastic maybe took fucking months you idiot. You are fixating on the dumb format and covering your ears to a band who rot at their rehearsal room, spent many long months to make songs you shrug away just because it’s on a CD? Yeah, it feels better to be put out on vinyl cause that means someone with money cares enough about your music to put it out. But you can dub a tape at home, you can burn a CD at home, and from our perspective, doing these things at home gives us the feeling of we’ve gained something already.

It’s like getting published in MRR: Would it change what I’m saying if this was just another post on my blog? So this is arrogance as well. My friends were kinda proud and happy when they made it into the pages of MRR in a scene report. But (like almost all the scene reports) I wrote it on my own, not as some ‘beat reporter’ for MRR. Nobody asked me to write it. So what was significant about it? They already knew what I thought about them. Again, being validated matters, but the look doesn’t change what what’s being said, or the content that’s being covered.

It’s the same thing for me with owning records. I like to own them. I like the covers, the smell, the stories, the feel I had when I bought them. It was a religious moment when I first heard “Where is my Mind” by the Pixies on vinyl. Something in my chest started levitating. And it was amazing to be 80% blind from booze at a record-listening house party but finding the right record and putting it on. Singing Nerves songs drunk with a guy who looked like a bad guy from a French cartoon, showing him the lyric sheet with lines about my love life; the next morning watching my host put all his LPs back in order and stare at record covers for long hours…

These things are cool but owning things is also a cultural headhunt—putting things on the shelves like trophies. We feel like they represent us like the shirts we wear. Not just to other people but to me as well. I’m being reminded how awesome I am constantly. I look at my shirt and I feel great cause I own a shirt like this, I like a band like this, I listen to a band like this so I’m something like this. I look good, my room looks good, I feel great cause my thoughts look great. But buying records is not easy! When I mailorder records from where I am the postage price doubles the price of my record! And many places don’t even ship here! There’s not a single good shop or distro in here either. So while I love distros—browsing through them drunk and just finding something I have to have, driven by pure and delirious instincts—I still listen to most of my music in mp3 anyway. So why is it different or any worse?

Sometimes when I speak about records I feel like cheating when I say I have them cause I only really have them in digital format. But I still have feelings for them. They made me happy, angry, or sad. I know these records, I like them, I listen to them. And they sound the same. I mean, not really, but who cares about ‘bit rate’ when you are listening to Perdition or Lebenden Toten! I think actually the shittiness of crappy mp3s might even make them more evil, fragile, bedroom-ish and punk. Or maybe not. I don’t know! I wanna know though. Cause after all I hear them from a source but I hear them in my head too, and that’s where it matters most.

I remember being a kid thinking that if they translated all the comic books I would buy them all, but wondering at the same time, where would I keep them? There is not enough space in my room. But now I love music. I’m a music nerd but I can’t be a record geek cause if I wanna buy punk records I would have to stop being a punk and be someone instead who earns lots of money—so basically is a fucking asshole—just to be able to house all these records! Some people say they only listen to their LPs, meaning they stopped caring for new music. So they stopped being a punk and instead they just like to listen to punk bands they used to like, and by limiting their curiosity they can buy all presses and colors of the beloved totems of their youth, while I know that I will never own all the records I like.

Another thing: maybe what we do is secret but sometimes we just practice this line way too serious and we create more secrets than necessary.  90% of the bands say they are here for getting their message out. Sharing their stories, their frustration, making other people think or feel less alienated. But yet while most bands have their own presence or coverage on the internet, barely anyone is sharing their lyrics there. It has become yet another privilege of the record buyers to go through the lyrics sheets – and you know what?  I don’t think most of them even do! And this is the essence of first-world punk privilege and arrogance—not even really taking advantage of it!

But it’s true, even when I have the mp3s of a record I love, I still I miss the damn thing. Not the chance to see the matrix message, or put it on the shelf and feel great that I ‘own’ it, no—it’s the lyric sheet. The message that I know I don’t know. Even born speakers of English have doubts about specific lines and why would it hurt to share your own lyrics on your own platform on the internet? We are part of a message and thinking-based subculture but the main message of the music is hidden or relies on our pockets’ credibility? Sounds pretty fucked up to me.

All of us who these typed-in thoughts concern—we wanna read the lyrics, hold the records—ours and others’—we want go on tour without dealing with lame corporate internet band profiles. Some people out there are able to have all these things and even more. But they should never forget that they are lucky to be like this.  Yeah, your location matters, but how you deal with it matters even more.

how to do their own punk

What happened was I did myself a favor. This last year, I finally started working, I went to a high school reunion to tell my teachers how they tried to kill my brain and how great a job they did on my fellow classmates. Yeah, I was drunk and of course I stole some shit as well from some random classroom. But that’s how it usually goes, right? I fell in love with a girl who broke my heart but at least for the first time I had made love to someone I really loved. To heal my heart I traveled alone to a foreign city, ate vegan pizza with German punk celebrities and did speed from a filthy toilet seat at an illegal and underground dance club with a guy who rambled about the greatness of Bob Dylan, so I dropped my pants and showed him my third tattoo I got one day months earlier with those mythical four bars and the slogan ‘punk love.’

This column will be about punk love. Summoning everything, I have done more adult stuff in one year than maybe I should have, but as I said I did myself a favor. I can still evoke my younger self without the need to make up excuses for why I’m not that person we planned I would be. Maybe I haven’t stayed naïve and curious. I’m jaded more than even a grandpa should be but instead of glorifying my past I’m amazed by my present. Punk is at least for me about the present—staying young, ugly and smart. And mostly because I don’t believe in excuses. Why should anyone make those? Why would we do things we don’t really want? I don’t even believe in guilty pleasures. There’s no guilt in love. There’s no innocence as well. It’s just pure enthusiasm and blindfolded-diving into joy.

Punk love.
 For the first time this year I paid to sleep in a hostel. That’s where I had a huge revelation. I spent money to sleep in a “nice” hostel, and It was terrible. Before I was just hanging out at a hostel where my friend works. I wanted to sleep on a cold floor but be around a host I had known for years, or even one I just met hours ago but who I know will be cool cause fuck knows, we dress the same so we feel the same.

Seriously if you wear ripped jeans, sneakers and band t-shirts just hit me up and I will make you breakfast. And even though I was there with my friends I still felt alienated. And I felt that this is not real. Cause why would a room be real when the door only opens with money? Whenever I travel I always sleep where real people live. So I have to find punks around the world and convince them I will be cool to have around. And we will have these drunk late night conversations, nerding out on records or just learning from each others’ thoughts. Otherwise I stay on the streets and drink rum with war veteran homeless guys as I did in England once. It was great as well, it’s always great when it’s real. I want it in the pure form and this is the pure form. Hostels, big clubs, contracts, managers—you are stupid and too easy to achieve.

Lately the majority of the shows I went to took place at rehearsal rooms and I loved it cause finally we can be free. And there was no security or other bullshit policy system that clubs like to bust our balls with. Not even a fucking fight happened and it’s a big thing in Eastern Europe when you mix together angry, desperate kids in a small room with booze and loud music. I didn’t miss anything, and I couldn’t even imagine if something was missing. Heat? I was around many people and we sweated. I didn’t even need a cloak room cause I knew my friends wouldn’t steal my winter coat. It was just perfect.

But then either me or something else changed and all I saw around me was establishment. And I hate it. There is just no fun in establishments. I like changing, learning, improving and, I don’t know, just not rotting in one fucking spot. Even circulations are cool. They are always cool. My heart is always with people who can listen to bands and dress and think like they did when they were 16. But I like how my taste and the whole meta taste of the cosmical international punk community is changing and how we rediscover things let it be the Wipers or the whole good part of the ‘90s.  
Establishment sucks cause it makes things easy and when things are easy people get lazy. And I can feel there is a wall we built around ourselves cause there’s just nowhere further to go, we think. While the top is still far to reach. More so in punk there is no top to reach at all. It’s just a constant struggle and you die. But without struggle life would be fucking boring. And let’s face it it’s already has been very very boring. All of us could have it much easier. Like get a job with a shirt and tie and buy fancy shits to kill time. We are making it harder.

But where is the agenda in going anywhere when the tendency is go to a show and see every weekend the same bands, playing the same songs to the same people at the same place and people just no longer care. They no longer care about the rage in the songs, bands don’t careabout saying something new or just anything that still matters. As I see we just no longer care for a show, for a band, for the magic, we just wanna socialize, drink beer, have funny but shallow conversations and save our weekends instead of saving our lives.

In the message boards everybody is saying the show was good but the after party with nostalgic songs was even better. And I’m fully on the side of dancing but not to nostalgic stupid songs we half laugh, cause ‘yeeea this is what I was listening to when I was a kid.’ You are still a kid if you’re still a punk and kids are open to new things, they wanna learn, they wanna know everything in the world and everything what is new is magical to them. And this is what I can’t really see. It has become entertainment. Fucking instead of love making. I love new bands but it’s just sad when they are dragged out from the rehearsal room cause “we heard you are playing music and everybody is curious so please come” and by then these bands become just products for promotion but it’s no problem cause everybody will applaud cause we’re all friends.

That applause is the establishment. It’s good to witness people feeling awkward and willing to die behind their instruments, but I just wish them some extra months in the rehearsal room. Or I should just go to their practices. And witness their magic there. ‘Cause why the fuck not? I love shows but there is some more intimate magic in going to someone’s rehearsal.

And it sounds good on paper that most of the new bands I have seen this year sounded like Beat Happening trying to play Negative Approach songs, but the truth is I missed confidence from these players. Feeling awkward and shy wasn’t what they wanted. And the simplicity of punk always satisfies you with the joy of getting what you wanted. Cause you are able to get it yourself if you try. But as a good friend of mine said, some bands are just too into the vibe of doing band stuffs than trying to write good songs and being a truly good band. If you wanna get satisfied by others you can be disappointed, while if you are reaching for your own acceptance you will never be fully let down.


To say again, establishments are terrible. Just go to Germany and I swear you will get bored of anti-fascism. Cause we are always anti-something and it makes everything easy. The problem is somehow this. Most of us define ourselves by what we are not doing, so I see more awful pictures of tortured animals than awesome photos of delicious food made out of veggies. We are heroes by not doing things. So we stopped doing things. You are good by not being racists, by not looking on women as a weaker sex, by not supporting countless ignominious companies.

Rebellion has become something we can adopt. And it gives you nothing ‘cause you are just an opposite and not an alternative. And this gives you nothing. It’s like a reunion show. Maybe it’s good or magical—like seeing Hot Snakes was magical—but a reunion show never gives more than a more lively presentation of some songs of a disbanded group. It tells you nothing about what is happening right now, shows no connection to what you are doing right now. Establishment makes you stop being yourself. That’s why punk should never be fully established. And even by me saying this—thou shalt not do — it really means that you shouldn't believe me.

Cause what I’m bored of is the theater all of us are playing when we forget about ourselves. It’s when we start to tell others how to do their own punk. Cause I believe in this. There is no such thing as punk in general. There is no agenda punk should do, it’s not like something that could be defined by a purpose of what we have to achieve or something that is depending on the people who are in it. Or it does depend on the people in it but then we should just accept whatever that is. Cause whatever it is we are making it that way. And in that we are there—you as well as I. So stop saying how it should be, who should do it and all this shit. People are sad cause it’s no longer a threat? Really? Then make it be one. Don’t wait on others. Don’t be upset and paralyzed because everyone around you is doing it their way which is different than yours. And what the fuck will happen if something is different then what you do? I’ve started my zines, my bands, my blogs because I did not like what others were doing and I just knew that if I make them on my own it will be good, cause I know I will like it.

But I have never questioned the right of existence of lame things. I could tell the majority of the world that Ceremony sucks ass, that they are a bad band who are punk only for kids who exclusively listen to hardcore. Hardcore with caps lock. Hardcore with contracts and hotel rooms and baggy clothes and gymnastic moves. But I trust the members of Ceremony that they are doing whatever they like to do and I trust their listeners that maybe they know they could listen to better bands but they have chose to listen to crap instead. Because it’s just enough for them. Just because music isn’t for everyone doesn’t mean whoever doesn’t have a minimum of enthusiasm to be late for dates or work because there’s still one more song I should listen to, that they shouldn’t be allowed to listen to music at all. Or punk music either. Just like how gay marriage won’t break up our parents pact of eternal love, lame people won’t destroy our punk either. I know this myself because I spent too much fucking time bragging about what is shit instead of making an alternative. Nothing has changed and I still like good things and want to do good things even if forgetting myself and being a critic is easier.

And what if people will think what I’m doing is crap? Well I won’t care ‘cause I like what I’m doing  so much that I don’t need others’ acceptance. I hate people begging for respect. Do something you can respect and maybe people who think the same or be able to spot real things will respect you. But mostly old guys are addicted to young kids’ respect. And they don’t get it cause they stopped doing awesome things decades ago. But just because something is said ten years ago it won’t make it truer due to the fact it’s older. The Bible is something like that and we don’t wanna be Christians. Cause even scientologists are more up to date than old crucifix lovers.

It’s not an unnatural thing to be bummed out by others. And it’s even more natural to just stop caring. We are punx and we are extraordinary. I’m tired of this. I’m also tired of people seeing punk as something that is up to the punks who are doing it. The punks who are around us. Yeah maybe a scene is what people are making it, but there is always smaller parts that makes the scene. And that’s your punk.

Sometimes we act like this is a ship and from wherever a new wind comes we are fucked. But we are swimming in the ocean. Don’t be afraid of being alone. Cause being alone means you are being yourself and if you can be yourself people might just like who you are—not just where you are and who you know.

I know for a fact that there is nothing better than walking alone at night in abandoned neighborhoods when the weather is foggy and wet and you just listen to the best music that is noisy but still beautiful. Cause everything is beautiful when it’s played by eternal kids and heard through headphones while the freezing air tries to break you. I got so psyked one autumn night listening to Void and the Libyans I got goose bumps and I just wanted to stay out on the streets, walk a million miles alone until the sun came up. Or when I went to have a relationship-reconciliation-speak and was listening to Sonskull on the bus and couldn’t really believe anything could be better heared. My lonely twelve hour train ride back home from Germany blasting The Men’s second LP for 4 hours straight and forgetting about all my annoying travelmates. Or last night walking in a foggy forest to Universal Order of Armageddon and been amazed by how beautiful some of their guitar parts are.

But this is music. Strength in solitude comes when you just have thoughts that you gather together by only you, or when you are losing yourself in a crowd just focusing on how and what you feel. These things. Dancing like you don’t care. Or dancing because you care and wanna show them. Please always care and do things you feel like you want to do. I know it sounds too typical. But it also feels fucking good which is not a too typical a feeling in this existence. And see I’m doing it again now. Forgetting myself and telling you what to do. Anarchists never say please come closer. They believe people are standing wherever they want to stand and they don’t wanna tell others what to do. When you are in love you just don’t care about what others do cause they can’t change your happiness. When you are in love you are just capable and willing to do anything. When you are in love you’re just able to be yourself without the need to make excuses. This is punk love and I know it won’t dump me.

The Hungarian Defekt Punk Scene Report in MRR #336

Out in the dark. While the snow is obstinately falling on my town. Feeling alright. There is a mix of sludgy melting snowflakes and my smile on my face. I feel great because memories from the last night are coming back. I was at a house party but since a couple months, every house party means a bit more than smoking in the kitchen and getting dizzy from cheap beer while nodding to ironic or nostalgic, stupid songs. I was out in the dark last year and did the exact same circle around my neighborhood as I did tonight. Maybe I had a similar ink stamp on my wrist from the show last night, or maybe still a few nights before. The only thing that has been changed is that now I have house parties to go to and have fun with people there. When the routine bites hard you could tell that you probably have an OK scene. When you’re in love with a specific trend it must be an explosion within the scene. And even giving it a name means something more, because names are only given to big things. When I thought about all these kids as a crowd, I came up with “Defekt Scene” as the definition. There was one specific show where most of the people who showed up looked like those that remained from the male population after a war fought in the recent past, who were weak enough to be left behind the safe lines because they are not even good for first-row bullet catchers.

Almost a year ago I have attended a house party in the deep countryside in a barn. I went there to have fun not to witness some kind of magic. I never hated the kids, I always was pissed off by the old people who made up stupid rules or routines to scare away little kids from doing anything out of their hearts not out from a stupid fake ethical code. Although I never was too social with people I had nothing to do with this. I liked people from a distance. But at that party I felt the youth, connecting, rebellion and fun. It was a party full of people who at other parties would be in the corner, completely invisible. Poor wallflowers. Here everyone mattered and it was amazing. Everyone shared their beers, jokes, equipment and contacts for foreign show promoters. Everyone was nice and the bands were kinda great too. Leaving with a huge positive emotional charge I watched all these kids at the shows and they attended all of them, either as a devoted fan of the punk scene itself or as a band member ripping up the stage. After this revelation I had to realize that this year is a center of something really great. Bands formed with the desire to play great music. They tour, host other bands, do interesting home recording sessions. They are active politically and socially. The scene thinks, and people have opinions which they stick into in their acts. Finally, they have fucking great acts. Every show is a big hang out, with the teen-angst in the focus. And the house afterparties are clearly the icing on the cake. These kids created their own scene and they don’t give a fuck about assholes who try to mock them or laugh at them. They don’t need anyone but themselves. Society doesn’t provide them weekend entertainment so they just rot in their rehearsal rooms writing songs in these gifted empty nights.

The quintessence of this scene may be LÖMBIHEAD. On terrible hangover-soaked days I usually wonder if at the show there were about 60 people how the hell can I only remember that 20 specific familiar faces. I first saw Lömbihead at that magical barn fest I mentioned above and I haven’t recognized these kids since they hit the metaphorical stage. After that they disappeared, only to come into view again in the lower end of the night when one of them asked if someone wants to smoke some pot with them. They blended in, they hid in corners or behind bigger room-plants. A couple hours earlier, when they started to play I couldn’t do anything but to surrender and move my head, my body and my whole devotion of punk kids’ bedroom music. They played sloppy but in the good way, when they couldn't care less about anything else but to have fun. Amazing mix of the geeky craziness of Ramones, the witty parts of Fugazi and some visceral Urinals. The latest is the coolest because as it turned out couple months later the band did not know Urinals at all. This post-apocalyptic, nuclear beach party music is one of the finest things that have ever come out of this shithole. The lyrics are as smart as they are obscene and harsh. Their sweet and awkward aura captures me all the time. There’s no show happening on the stage it’s just pure teenage noise music you must listen and see if you have the ability to recognize it. One particular dance has evolved around these kids in which the crowd goes half naked. Looking at this scenario and their bodies gives an idea about the name “Defekt”. Beers in their hands and half naked, young kids hug each other. It’s a magical scene you wouldn’t wanna miss. The formally most unimportant kids in society doing the most important thing on earth: saving their own lives. From boredom, from growing up, from spending a Friday night alone, from pining over rejections.

As it usually goes around in Hungary, there’s no clear reason why this bunch of bands came to existence, all in this specific time. No band sounds like the other and all the kids became friends after they started playing shows together or just found each other by the common coincidence of making something really cool. There were good bands before them. A few but there’s no specific sound bequeathed to this new generation. Maybe hints of some attitude but come on, real punks have their unwritten code of honor since forever. DIY or die. We go everywhere because we wanna play. One band is around for years, starting out in the “non-defect” times, still running and giving us better stuff from show to show. The name is DANCE OR DIE. Finally they have gained their well deserved due – at least here – and they rip. They operate on this late ‘90s, early ‘00s “where do we go from here” gloomy, melodic sound mixed with the “we don’t wanna grow up” desperation which is the teenage angst without an expiration date on it. Some classify them as fast core or crust mixed with some emo, but in the bottom line it’s just fast, and passionate hardcore / punk with three guys screaming and four guys seemingly playing their hearts out on their instruments. The usual criticism of seeing them live is they look sad. Well, the whole continent is sealed with a romanticized sadness which just gets filled with more realism if we go East. Maybe their lovelessness shines through as much from their looks as from their songs, but since when do we wanna turn our heads away if we see something being such real at a punk show? If you wanna have fun then learn their lyrics and sing with them. It’s not that easy to observe other people’s emotional outtakes when you’re singing along and shaking. A couple of weeks ago I saw them with the poorest sound a shady club could offer. That raging, emotionally exhausting noise got turned down and they sounded like a passionate tuneful punk band who does not just write songs that will do the thing but they perform them with a lot of will.

Wandering off from the outskirts and going towards the center of the city that looks like Prague but dirtier (Budapest) we find the residence of FOR MY FRIENDS, a bunch of wild kids, drugged and messed up. They started out from the ashes of NOTHING, a band that finally wanted to play good music and even though they played terribly live… at least it wasn’t shitty music performed even shittier. Falling out from the classical straight up angry kid hardcore, For My Friends rather goes with the beer-flavored bearded pop or melodic punk mixed with a little more anger and geekiness. Although, I doubt these guys had enough time to secrete as many hormones as needed to grow a decent beard. Moreover, they lacked the will for many long months to play their songs properly. I saw them once and it was like Sex Pistols with four Sid Vicious’ on heroin. The ideas behind their music were always cool, but the whole picture looked more like a good draft than an actual act. As it usually goes, time could fix what diligence could have done quicker. The drummer still could enter a “who could beat an egg longer, with full force but without breaking the shell” contest but at least now the music sounds to be more tight. The casual critic, standing right next to me on a recent gig told me: “we rather hear their influences than the song itself”. Even though he was damn right, FOR MY FRIENDS plays a type of music which could capture you, make you bang your head and put a smile on your face. Taking away my personal bias of living the same city, I have no idea how good they could be, but the good thing for me is I don’t have to care about that. If you don’t like them then move here and get used to the mistakes. Trust me, it’s great to see kids swinging in with a beer, some weed and broken hearts, trying to be Budapest’s best dancers. Of course they are far from it but at least they are trying.

Hailing from Salgótarján, here we have Gábor Rádi, former vocalist of SÄW, a guy with two bands and a label which called KIDS LIKE US and still lives in an incubator. One of his music projects is called YOUNG ARSENAL. Inspired by, and sometimes aping, the so-called Kirsch sound they play open chord, raw, noisy but melodic-in-the-emo-way hardcore punk with social/political lyrics and a lot of use of sound collages both at live shows and on record. Well, you rather listen to them on record if you want to hear the real thing because at live shows they play with stockings on their heads (women's nylon, not the bank robber type) which obstruct their view so they don't see the microphones they are supposed to sing in and the mp3 player with which the aforementioned interlude skits should be played from. Even though sometimes they test your nerves and make one query their whole existence, I must be fair because most of the times they do a solid job with delivering fine punk rock. On the other hand, Gábor's other band called FUSEISM is something I haven’t heard before. Their guitarist comes from this island within Budapest called Csepel which is like another universe. It’s residents are chained to the shores, turning into agoraphobics on that tiny land. Especially if we mix punks with the cheapest local beer, enough glue and one of the biggest industrial areas of the country with many abandoned buildings, fine spaces for rehearsal rooms, raves or simply vanishing from society. This guy cut his bonds. He didn’t burn any bridges but delivers the best guitar parts since I could even remember. I read that revolution summer – or maybe just Guy Picciotto’s guitar parts in Rites Of Spring – were hugely influenced by the guitar play of Rikk Agnew. That is what FUSEISM reeks of too. Dreamy, rev. summer guitar rage pushed through the echoes of the surf sound and a little bit of the taste of the guitar overdose given by nowadays Fucked Up. It is delivered with a cold handed rhythm section and consciously weak vocals, like the singer doesn’t even try to sound enjoyable or simply doesn't care at all. FUSEISM dwells on ground that could capture the attention of lame hipsters as well but they have the attitude and credo that can convince punks that all the fancy assholes at the shows are there by mistake. This band is the real deal.

Going west into Veszprém County we get the hotbed of new punk in Hungary. The two epitomes of the scene are PFA and PLAN BEER, a group of friends and tour mates. PFA is formed by four ultimate nasty kids. As news says, now they are backed up by a keyboard player, but no one had the luck to see this formation so far I’m writing these lines. These fucked up little prodigies are killing it every time, everywhere. They play thrashy punk hardcore with sweaty, mutilated one-finger solos. Pace is changing like a rollercoaster of a mood of a drunken person, balancing on the edge of passing out and endless raving. Their short, to-the-point lyrics are like drunken revelations and epiphanies of modern society and of punk itself, murmured at the lower ends of house parties on a couch with vomit stains. Every word have this awakening stink of belching. They need to be digested a bit but all in all they are thoughtful, funny, ironic and most of all true. Like a book consisting of nothing but perfect one-liners one after another. PFA would be excellent music to drop acid to and watch weird movies played backwards, or just wonder about these kinda things. It’s not the sound of terror. It’s the sound of taking weird drugs what make you more punk not a smiling puppy who accepts everything what the world offers.

PLAN BEER, on the other hand, walks along the classical path of punk, playing nothing but fast and smart music filled with the anger of youth. They use more melodies, with singalong parts and mid-tempos, injecting a darkish, atmospheric tone to the whole sound - a kind which totally resonates with the desperation that makes punk music awesome. They sound as punk should have sounded after the glorious days of the 80s, not as punk had been fucked up in the medieval decade of the 90s - speaking of course within the map lines of Hungary. There is nothing progressive in their sound but the timelessness of their songs are truly about the present. Luckily we live and listen to everything in the present so it can stick with us until we becomes the past. They play their guitars and shout their lyrics in a way that offers something to think about and most of the times they nail it with the slight chance of fucking it up which makes their music more interesting. This last sentence is quite true for all the previous band descriptions included in this report. If you’re looking for punk rock in its raw beauty, without any added polish or adjectives, here you are.

The last band that comes to my mind when thinking of something awesomely wrong is MIND YOUR STEP. Hailing from the area of Győr, they play furious punk / hardcore what reminds you to early Agnostic Front, SSD or slower fastcore bands like Youth Attack fame. Well, their point is to play fast and noisy. The first time I heard them I didn’t see them cause I was handling the door the a show. They did a Minor Threat song which sounded sloppy through the door between me and the stage. My friend came to me and told me that they should rather cover Void, because even if they fuck it up it is still Void, or rather it is even more Void. This is kind of what you get from them. A chase for staying in time that sometimes leads into chaotic noise but it still is good and entertaining even when it falls apart, like a tightrope walker who falls, only with punk if you fall you won’t get hurt. That is the best show everyone wants to see. And it’s not even sympathy towards them. They are great in the punk way and punk way is the best way.

So this is the “Defekt Scene”. Mostly. I’m sure where there is punk there are also kids who are exactly the same. And if you don’t see magic in them I’m sorry but you should rather go with radio rock. Young and snotty kids stick together, throwing guerilla house parties or rehearsal room shows, forming new bands, writing fanzines. All in all, they make their shit happen. Of course there are more Hungarian bands. What you’ve read about is just a tiny piece of it. Some groups are even better for my taste than any of these bands above, but this scene captures something significant that is happening now here, in a scene that usually always looked down on newcomers and weirdos, with a government fucking everyone’s lives up. Now punk music and punks in barns and bedrooms seem to have restored what it’s about. A cool, nasty, weird, nerdy but honest secret. And big one.

most of the bands' records are up here: http://heart-a-tact.blogspot.com/

even in case i'm burning please don't piss on me

After many wasted with watching tv and snacking years I finally made a zine in English in last year’s summer. Mostly to make some money on tour so I can buy lunch and beer. And because I hate everything that is limited I offer now all my thoughts in forms of deranged sentences to the digital world. Here you are seekers of my mind. Most of the words were typed during a 2 weeks long storm. Mostly drunk, after midnight. The zine I made before this has a foreword written by my friend who plays now in the band Rákosi but he was my self-help consultant with his previous band RedlineOffside when I was 14, growing up. Doing the same again I wanted to ask my other friend Kuti to write me a foreword but he rather chose hanging out at weird places talking to too fancy ladies. So I wrote a foreword myself. Here it is together with the whole fanzine. I was hesitating on whether I should upload the pdf version to some online document browser platform but the zine has naked pictures of me being a kid and I would miss my parents if FBI put them in jail.

EICIBPDPOM - foreword

EICIBPDPOM - raving / raging

I was watching this awesome show. The band played fun type of hardcore. I think late era Negative Approach’s sound is after all just so much fun, fun, fun. Not to laugh at but when I’m listening to it I won’t feel like I need to go down the streets to get into fights or prove my credibility of being a survival of the hood. Not even wanna wear a pair of boots. Maybe the most aggressive thing what occurs me while hearing it is grabbing my friends’ leatherjackets and shaking them by those. I saw this once in the back of a kebab restaurant in germany and the image is haunting me ever since. Yeah that is perfect fun. Or just drink beer and witness again with my eardrums the total chaotic and also wildlife rage of such bands and how compact they’re delivering it. The only thing that sticks to punk in my head as a denial of something is that punk can’t be enjoyable after 16 if you’re not dumb. Fuck those who say they’re grown out of it. Just like them who were too lazy or stupid to find other music that they can listen to because they accidently forced themselves into few bands when they were young. And now looking on this as a used to be a good thing. Lazy bastards. So the band played this kind of music. Forever fun hard as fuck core but with that much visceral pleasure what the early Agnostic Front records had. When they played such fast and amateurish that I’m cheering for them all the time not to drop their instruments out of enthusiasm and of the chase to finish the song all together at the same time. Sometimes some sound tracks are racing with others. It’s so awesome and geeky while they try to be total jocks. How cute is this? Like when little kids run around with their blankets on their backs imagining themselves to be costumed superheroes. And there was this girl drinking beer in her golden outfit completely disrespecting the heritage of the inventors of pogo dancing. She moved like it was a party cause it was a band playing for young people on a Friday night. We all know what is bad, then why would a weekend have to be infected with problem raising and failure of solving any of those. Bad capitalism and muscular people who take Skrewdriver serious. Fuck the cops and manipulators of the scene. As that girl danced I just watched her and through her that show was dreamy and punk had become meaningful. Dancing is just fun and good music is fun, fun, fun as well. What if the two don’t fit perfectly? It means you don’t care about bullshit conventions. It’s not about freedom it’s about having a huge fucking fun. Why people love pogo dance moves? Because they’re mindless. They are shy so to avoid possible awkwardness they just force their joy into established movements. Why do some people only watch shows from the background not moving a bit? Maybe their backs hurt or they like to drink beer more than dancing. The point of long hair is to shake my head and feel how good it is to bang a head. Go in front of stages and have seizure there. With long hair every piece of hair is just another reason to listen to music that is bangable. Up and down or side by side. Long hair blocks some sounds of the headphone, thus makes every sound a little bit distant and more mysterious. Like how could that girl love if she writes these amazing lyrics and sings them the way she does? It’s a mystery how could Nico loved. And my hair just makes it more obscure. This is the key to music, the imaginations of the players and the visions of the situations all in the heads of the listeners. It’s the best thing that could happen to my brain. How could that girl love who danced to oi influenced hardcore? And she wasn’t a skinhead. She looked more like a raver. A type of person I’d like to show music so she can show me her crazy dance moves. Or just tell her how cool some bands are and she would smile on me for being crazy to tell her about my latest findings of awesome punk music. I lost interest writing this. I wanna meet cool girls around great music.

EICIBPDPOM - career

I made a lot of money that summer. I had several jobs and other things. One of the other things was that I sold copies of my childhood pictures to pedophiles. When I was young Michael Jackson was a big thing and I always liked some aspects of dancing though I’m a really lazy guy. So what I did was that I hold my penis all the time as a tribute to Jacko. I hold it in school, on the streets, once on a funeral of one of my grand mom’s sister and his war-criminal husband. There’s a yearful or two photos of me touching my penis sometimes without pants. I sold them to pedophiles. The cops tried to bust me but I’m a grown up who sold those pictures about himself being a kid. With a dick in his hands but whatever. Other than this I was helping old ladies up on the escalator at a subway station. There I met a nun and she offered me a job. She knew my window faced a satanic cult’s weekly rituals cause I told her but she had a really bad case of hearing and thought I was actually in that cult. So she offered me a job to work for the catholic church. My job was to watch movies, read books and listen to music. Cause as she put it, it already doesn’t matter at all what happens to my soul. And she knew about my weak link to pedophiles so she thought I would make a great fit for her employers. Basically I had to write reviews but in the context of a catholic person. And if needed what kind of protest strategies I’m recommending. I was among the few critics that really mattered and wasn’t just a person who’s telling about his opinions on things. I don’t know why but they told me this. Around that time I was drinking too much home distilled brew I started hallucinating and actually joined the satanic cult that had gatherings in front of my window. We burned plastic and painted pictures of goats. I didn’t really see the point. Satan just sounded like a jock. This red muscular dude who’s fucking with people just because they had fun with doing exactly the same what he would do. That’s what bothers me about the subcultures that exist in spite of something. What they created to believe in, in opposite of what they hate is just creepier than what I should hate. I just don’t care about bullshit. I care about having fun and not being bothered. I quit all my jobs and duties. I only needed the money so I can maybe be with the girl I love. But she lives far away from me. And at least being around her is not really bothering me. I don’t care about distance either. I left the cult and it was the last straw for them to broke up and the hill in front of my window became a place where people brought prostitutes in their cars. I suspect the catholic church knew it was coming. The things we hate always smarter then we are. The things that aren’t are just sad. Now I have to face people having intercourses. For what guys are paying huge money. Looks like some people would do anything just to get laid.