#354

Whatever you will think after reading all this I actually do not believe that AGNOSTIC FRONT has written the most important song ever. Although I am thinking a lot about pooowwwwer these days. Because like it or not even punk is concerned with a lot of power issues. Of course, because punk is about life.

Power is nothing by itself—it’s only happening when people are legitimating it. But we are slaves most of the time to our own codes of establishment—the hierarchies all around that we let enslave us. I heard about a guy who got stabbed in prison because, when he was playing the guessing game with his cellmate, he was thinking of a platypus and his cellmate thought he must be cheating ‘cause for him there’s no such thing as that cute animal. I think this perfectly sums up how power and legitimation works. We are only as smart in the big picture as other people think we are. Just take yourself as an example, when you were in math class you didn’t just think it was hard but you actually thought this is a bunch of bullshit, total nonsense, when really it was just because you felt you didn’t need it. And while ignorance could be bliss, people should stand up and not take power in their own hands but just try to vanish it fully. ‘Cause as long as there’s power it’s gonna be in wrong hands.

            How can people enjoy constantly submitting to someone standing above them? The hot topic of punk today is PUSSY RIOT, and while their heroic self-sacrifice to lay bare how Russia is still a dictatorship was an amazing example of higher ethics, sadly they have sacrificed themselves for almost nothing. Just a spotlight on a problem. For centuries now we only reflect on problems not on solutions and we gave power to people in hope that they are the new ones so they will make a change. Which leads to essentially doing nothing except hoping that everything will be better with someone else in charge.

            We need something different! It has to be us who will change, not someone who says it will and makes us believe it. Maybe that’s why that Greek graffiti is true, “Punk rock won’t change the world, punks with rocks will!”

But I would rather say not all of those rocks should be thrown. Most of them should be spared to build something different. Not just better, but different and new. Things could be “better,” but remember if you play a game and its rules allow the players to be cruel than the game itself is cruel. As I see the world, it’s a place where we live by constantly negotiated exchanges. We use money ‘cause trade and barter would just be too confusing. We get money for our services and we pay money to others. We believe the value of money is changing like the weather. There is time, nations, languages, governments and the economy that we need to rule us. We made all of them and we accept them really ‘cause we fear a world without them. Doctors won’t be doctors and bakers won’t make bread if they are not paid, and we will just die. So basically people are doing their jobs out of fear: we won’t get money, and others won’t do their jobs if I stop to do mine. Laziness, apathy, fear, power.

I don’t want chaos, I want order to have no sense. I always believed making things pointless is more effective in destroying them than taking them over and trying to change them.

For me the key is the most utopian idea ever. It’s also the key to how this zine works. You take people who just want to give without receiving anything—people who wanna create something together without doing harm to others, without really asking for anything in return. I mean, I know you bought this issue for a couple bucks, but that’s because this zine exists in a certian environment. Some money has to be paid but at the end of the day, but it’s still–and will hopefully always be—totally non-profit. I believe in people’s own power to be a part of things like that. The power that helps them do what they do the best or to help others in the best way possible.

Let me be clear: this is not some new age hippy bullshit. Nothing will change anytime soon. And I hate when I’m the only one doing the dishes for a whole fucking week. But until we rely on each other in this way so we can rule with each other we are fucked. And maybe if we were more focused on giving rather than just receiving, we would receive a bit more. Today I cooked and I got a coffee not in return—not for some kind of trade, but just out of being nice.

As you can tell, nowadays I’m interested in these kinds of larger-than-life issues, especially when they are happening to a single person or within a person. Basically yeah, I guess I’m into existentialism, or whatever. But I’m the most under-read person ever, although I do have this fetish to fill my shelves with novels about the pointlessness of life, which to me always enlarges the point of living a life. To create it in whatever way you feel like it should be. This is what these books never say on the page, but what they really actually mean. That’s why I’m sometimes afraid to read them. I’m afraid to watch those movies as well. Cause I always imagine them to be much more heavy, much more fucked up, much more real than they really are. Because it’s always scary to start to dig yourself into something that you suppose is the realest thing in the world. I’m somehow afraid of the truth one person has found in a room, but at the same time I’m constantly searching the whole world for truth in noise that kids create in cramped, sweaty rooms. But that’s because music is different for me—not something that just reports the sorrow but something that makes it beautiful.

I’m pretty much getting obsessed nowadays with LIFE’S BLOOD, Revolution Summer bands and mostly also acts who were existing in some kind of oppression or as an opposite, being a new answer. Bands or performers who, while doing what I like them to do, somehow could also transform the whole thing into larger-than-life forces, or at least just larger than some dudes or ladies with guitars.

I experienced this last weekend when I happened to once again be at the rehearsal room to see some friends’ new band practice. It’s always funny when you know someone before he or she started to play music. Because with that in mind even their mistakes can be such an amazing force of angry, desperate kids reliving their anger and confusion through smart, unpredictable and kinda melodic songs. And it’s not just because my friend was playing guitar and singing some words, it’s simply because they’re a great band performing great songs shaken by their anger.

People seem to never understand how people could be totally different when they’re doing these kinds of things, different from their “regular” self “off the stage”—or in person from how they are on record. And not talking about people being “crazy” or “letting loose” on stage, rather I like finding that special kind of heaviness in bands and people playing music that makes them uniquely alive on stage. The kind that doesn’t come with wall of sound volume ‘cause even the cutest hum from the collective mouths of BEAT HAPPENING is bearing weight that shields all of us and crushes any asshole’s existence. But yeah, the obvious heaviness of LIFE’S BLOOD is good for me too in trying to anchor myself in total nihilism or too much stress—to leave it to others to rage instead of me.

I like that many people associate hardcore with the city that is New York and “New York Hardcore” with such bands as either those dinosaurs of SICK OF IT ALL, MADBALL, AGNOSTIC FRONT, or straight edge, or youth crew in general. I like the filth and anger of New York, the city that was once so crazy and dangerous that people mostly survived it rather than lived it. Or fuck knows, I mean the pictures of it from Woody Allen are quite different than what John Joseph or Michael Gira tell us through their music. I prefer the later when it comes to experiencing a town through art. I think music is power. But music itself has no power; people who are making music do. So while these horribly true songs about New York are the realest of things, nothing will be changed because of them. Just like how Pussy Riot as a band doesn’t have, somehow those three women conquered the whole world. LIFE’S BLOOD is not only playing Oi influenced bouncing and slashing hardcore which is catchy and dangerous enough as a psychopath who would grab your throat and shake the life out of you. But their songs are also soundtracks. Sounds of life, of a town, of people, of feelings. Of outsiders rising up and taking control over their lives. Anything that’s real or should be real or should not be real.

It’s cool that there are music scenes, but also that there are people being outsiders from them. I always loved the idea of scenes in a particular place ‘cause punk music for me is not simply the songs but the whole background world behind them as well. Seriously I could hate or at least be totally uninterested in bands if they are not somehow part of any scene and at the same time not also outsiders by fate. Scenes are great too ‘cause I also like those kind of connections in music. And what is better than people inspiring each other, being friends, partners, supporters of one another. So anyone who thinks scenes sucks is retarded. Only terrible scenes are terrible—that’s how life works.

I have spent a night trying to finish this column while inspiring myself with the big three of Revolution Summer DC—RITES OF SPRING, ONE LAST WISH and EMBRACE. Three bands with only one LP each, but all showing some deeper depths of punk, and using what was so good in early UK punk in terms of theatrical guitars and post-punkish pure strength, and then mixing it with their own open desperation. Showing power while telling how human we all are. Creating a whole new world widening our bedroom angst, proving there is no such thing as too much anger. And they did this with whatever was contemporary to them. 

Nowadays Oi-core is again back in the game, but who will ever be as viciously melodic as BLACK MARKET BABY? Senseless Offerings is an LP that you can’t beat. So powerful, anthemic and at the same time sounds like such a total lone wolf band that its unique strengths makes it something that is unable to be reproduced.

One of the darkest bands ever connected to the dance of days forever scene was UNITED MUTATION. Where is the promised UNITED MUTATION discography LP? Anyways they are being one the flagships of my everyday jams. Those throat cancer vocals and the brutally crazy music that gathers all the filth that failed people like to hump in. Mutant hardcore. UNITED MUTATION’s mutant hardcore was what now would be called “mysterious guy hardcore.” And also, I’m biased towards YOUTH ATTACK I think it’s cool they have founded a scene and a sound. But you kids shouldn’t buy their bin bag shirts cause it’s the blindest way of legitimizing and making something some kind of fucking establishment, as if whatever is cool mostly because it’s labeled a certain way. Fuck that. I’m here for more.

I think I’m running out of space so my final thought is go and listen to BLAST AND THE DETERGENTS.