I already miss being a guest columnist. Not
because of some new pressure to get a column done every month, but rather it’s
missing a different kind of pressure. When you write a guest column it means
you really wanted to write something, so it mattered enough for you to suck
yourself up and inject your ideas out onto the world. It’s like your first
record. Or you could think about it like the first letter you typed in and
worked on it painstakingly ‘til you hit the send button—you put everything you
had you put into it. And now I’m just afraid I will stop to care cause I’m in
an establishment. And as you may have learned from my columns so far. I hate
establishments. Kids: Even if you think this is cool (or especially if you
don’t) you should try to make something better because if you have the will you
will succeed. Just make something you like and don’t stop until you think it’s
cool. From then on no one’s opinion will matter.
Anyways, I did
what I just suggested above and hurray I have become a regular columnist.
Finally I can write about writing or not writing my columns. Or maybe I will
just continue writing about unboyfriendable girls and drunk thoughts on music
gathered together while listening to youth noise on night buses, drafted into
my falling apart cell phone and shredded little pieces of xeroxed fliers, and
with a pen the friend who is editing this gave me.
That is my face
up there. I collected those scares after one of my bands played (our last show)
with Supertouch. I mean the reformed Supertouch ‘cause unlike them I’m not old
as fuck. I just have couple gray hairs but I blame myself for reading Catcher in the Rye too often so I can
show these half-dead parts of my mop to cashier girls instead of my ID card
when I’m buying booze at train stations.
Anyway what
happened was my band played and because I’m not that into nostalgia I started
hanging outside the show while Supertouch was searching for light. Sipping on
the last couple bottles of our free backstage beers and somehow I happened to
sit next to the roadie/merch guy for Supertouch. I bought some shots (more like
Hungarian moonshine for him) and because I was too much myself they wanted to
hang with me afterwards. ‘Cause after all, the city I live in is a city of
insane parties and cheap drinks and I know some of the lowest places, but I had
another agenda. See, I wanted to get together with this girl. Later I did and
she was the love of my life. So I asked her out for some after-the-gig drinks
but the Supertouch guys joined us, and kinda cock blocked me. So much for not
liking New York hardcore! We were about to meet at my favorite bar with these
so-called legends, but we went separately. And to be a funny gentleman who I
really am I told this girl she should jump on my back and ride me like a horse.
But also being the weak-ass drunk shit who I really am, I fell with her and
smashed my face into the cold concrete. I shrugged it away and went on with a
bleeding face into the night, met the Supertouch guys 20 minutes after, hit
three bars and fought myself through a couple more shots and beers. Found out
Mark Ryan was not in porn and maybe I might have rapped too often. Later on I
found myself in the girl’s flat and I was puking in her toilet while cracking
jokes about attending the public pool.
I woke the next
morning up to her temporarily sheltered dog licking my balls. But still, there
was no question when a few days later, while I played with my current band a
debut show at a really drunk rehearsal room gig, I ended up at her place again
making out secretly at her after-party a couple hours after some random punk
friend puked on my coat.
So, kids and old
farts: sometimes it’s worth it to smash your face into the ground, other times
it really isn’t. One of the things I like to do most—and maybe I’m doing it so
often that my mother once wanted to check me in to see if I’m autistic, but
that was during the cold war and she had more to worry about, like nuclear
bombs and stuff… but so I like to be in my head. Is it called daydreaming?
Wondering? I like to call it being a punk cause most of the people in this
world are not punks and they are boring so I have to be with myself to not
wanna commit suicide out of boredom. Mix this inside my head with a one man
rendezvous with music and maybe you get me.
And sometimes the bad thing is when i go out
and see an awesome band play and I feel like my face had just hit some kinda
wall and it’s a bad, theoretical bleeding and knives in my back. This is not
what supposed to happen. Don’t get me wrong I love mistakes and crazy reality,
but sometimes I bless the holy Sid Vicious for the fact that most of my
midnight jams’ bands are disbanded or not touring the part of Europe where I
live. Ignorance is bliss. ‘Cause while seeing a band live is the thing, dancing
and watching other people dance, getting your cloths soaked in cheap cigarette
smoke while socializing with misfits... These things are cool. But sometimes
what looks beautiful is rotten to the core. That’s why midnight music is a
safety game. Midnight music is important for me. Either it’s happening out on
the streets while I take night strolls or in my room laying in my bed staring
on the cool mess of my room. Those are the moments when I’m just drifting, when
my body is just a frame for a mind that’s open for anything that comes to it.
So it’s like summer, when everything is alright and whatever is cool. These
jams are like meditation. It’s not just hitting the lotus pose with shutdown
eyes, it’s like in Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles 2 before they slay the bad guys—it just needs a special state of
mind.
I’m kinda
fragile during these nights, but that’s why I’m open for everything. And many
of these jams are sometimes trespassing in the guilty pleasure territories. But
punx seem to hate more on bands who could be major acts than major acts
themselves. and I guess on one hand it’s lame that bands wanna sound like
forced-to-be-listenable pop music, but on the other hand it’s cooler that they
could be huge but they rather stay in basements. Anyway maybe those merciless
haters are right and over-hyped bands are truly terrible—especially sometimes
live. Sometimes they sadly are and it can be a huge letdown.
Two of the most
hyped living-on-the-edge-of-punk bands are Iceage and Merchandise. I’ve seen
both bands and while I loved them on records and even traveled to see them,
both of them were a huge disappointment. And somehow in some strange
coincidence I should also mention, after both shows girls gave me free weed and
I puked my guts out on vague streets. So my midnight music naïvety got killed
those nights. Both nights everything else seemed alright: good support bands,
nice venues, awesome people, booze. And I love Iceage cause they are perfect
mistake punks. And these soulless, kinda Bret Easton Ellis-character-kids have
this Clockwork Orange-esque pure violence in them. So simple and natural I feel
like a pretentious asshole for using even these cliché book references.
Although I don’t really like riding with the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ crowd of the
2010s, I still like people who genuinely don’t give a fuck about others and
live inside their bubbles (that’s why I miss being a guest columnist: I miss my
bubble).
But I went to
see Iceage as the next big thing—and they are so far from it. It’s not their
fault but it’s insane that they are believed to be as if they were the only
band formed by teenagers playing collapsing distorted music. When I saw them
they were not yet casualties of the soulless rock biz: they were still a punk
band, and somehow the same band I see every weekend at rehearsal room shows or
if I go to my friends' practices. Iceage still were awkward, seemed lost and
all this. But nothing made them more than my friends’ bands. It’s more my
friends’ bands are better cause they are my friends. And my friends are not
being hyped to be here to save rock and roll. They are saving their lives. The
world doesn’t know about them cause they are lame teenagers—something Iceage
stopped being thanks to the hype-age of the internet. Cause lame teenagers
don’t get cover press from the whole world and screaming hot hipster girls in
the front row tearing the band’s black metal shirts off while begging for an
encore. Real punk life is not like this. This is a trick and in punk there’s no
gimmicks needed. Not even made up ones. But gimmick is in a way forced on bands
like Iceage by us tucking our heads way too far up in our asses and thinking,
“Wow this is sooo real like nothing else.” They have a wonderful record that
sounds innocent but vicious, like when you only have an idea what you want to
do but not about how you want to do it. But at the same time it was recorded
with an experienced guy in a good studio. And they are a great band but there
are many great bands as well who luckily
didn’t get the spotlight.
What’s charming
in Iceage is charming only if we stopped to notice it everywhere else. Iceage
is nothing original. And all I wanted when I saw them live was to be
entertained. I wanted to bang my drunk head, smile and become wet from the
crowd’s sweat. I wanted to feel like I still know the secret. But instead I
felt like there’s no secret at all, just that the world reached a point where
we are all burnt out enough to think they are a uniquely great band. No, it’s
punk pure that’s great because Iceage is just like everyone else who’s raw,
distrorted and honestly fucked up. Except to see them is a bit more expensive.
But I still
remember everything else that happened that night. And in a way I forgot
Iceage. I’m sure they are still great on record, in my room with me imagining
who they are, what they are doing and why they are doing it. I mean it’s not as
big of a fault to be unable to reproduce your magic in live as like being
Skrewdriver.
And Merchandise,
I have to mention too. Since I saw them I’m constantly listening to their new
record. And it’s great. It’s a perfect ode to a night of high hopes and
pre-broken hearts and import beers. Night lights and crossing bridges with loud
night buses. Meeting friends and getting lost in your hometown. Being half
awake after another ten hour shift and dancing in your mind, or being alone at
work and dancing to full volume. Music for parties under blankets. But live, it
was just... It was nothing. Sterile chaps who wanna get signed to Factory
Records, but this is not the Hacienda and no super high girl offered us free
MDMA. Although the record is still great.
Current midnight
jam: Cro Mags' "Down But Not Out," but not without the image of Tony
Molina stomping my spoiled brain. Caged
Animal 2012.
