#350

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.