HUNGARIAN SCENE REPORT (unedited)

It’s strange.

I have written a scene report focusing on mostly the people who are then started to become my friends and since all of them had bands, all of them were practicing almost at the same place and all of them were hanging at almost every show. So I made up a name as a joke to call this group of ours somehow. Since then more than two years have passed and now I felt that there is still music played by Magyars that deserves to be covered.
It deserves to be covered because every scene needs representation. It’s the know how of how we live among each other, how we create something new, what’s different to other places or how is it similar almost everywhere. This is not gonna be just facts, the number of local bands are much more than the sum that will appear within these lines. It’s just the bands i enjoy the most whom I like to swing my beer to at weekday shows when I forget the rest of my weekdays.

 The scene I wrote about two years ago, the Defekt scene, is having it’s dusk. The rehearsal room that even some foreign bands had experienced and was a center of late night hangouts, and crazy jamming, crawling on the floor and spontaneous festivals just failing cause of slacking. Get 30 punx and try to squeeze money out of them every month right on deadline time. Until this cataclysm, the room has served as a great space to create so much joy and friendships, new bands, new project, served as a recording space and as the perfect hangout spot. Among the filth there was always treasure.
But people are getting older thus have to have more responsibility and the parties what once were crazy, nihilist and utterly weird are now just became mellow hangings and early goodbyes due to waking up early at painful hangover mornings. But it seems that since the nihilism disappeared bands are becoming better.
With the political system and the whole world and how it’s working just getting worse and worse here there are still people not just shrugging their shoulders and joining the line but trying to create their own secret world, their own platform to express themselves and have a huge fucking amount of fun either as a threat or as protection.

Hungary has been put on the map. Budapest and Szeged are hosting all the great shows for touring bands from all around the world and other cities are holding possibilities for punx with free time to maintain their teenage riot. Pécs and Debrecen are on fire as well as Győr and it’s region who are being solid columns of the Hungarian punk underground for years.
The main agenda here is: Things must happen. If a band wants to come here and the promoter feels like he needs to book them, it will happen even if at a collapsing rehearsal room or around a tree in the beer garden of a medieval castle's yard or in the basement in some burn out bar for burn out people. And if there is the right amount of people with the right type of mood, magic could happen. If there is one thing that people here are good at is lose there shit to bands they can be enthusiastic about.
Standing in the middle between east and west and interestingly exotic and professionally good punk the one time when Hungary could be a champion is when we are appreciating the bands who have come here. The Hungarian soul is tired and doesn’t really look outside of it’s own room thus when people came into our rooms then we are filled with gratitude.
Having many people even in my room I have learnt through others’ stories it’s almost the same everywhere else. You just have to start doing things on your own and if you have the will you will at least end up with a scene that is your home.
Just put yourself out when you have something. Or invite the world inside your room if you have nothing. Share with the world and open your fucking eyes and help, appreciate, love what you have around you. Just try and do and the rest will follow.

From the punk house-like rehearsal space that was a living room for many of us for years, from the forever collapsing ruins of the defekt scene few bands have grown out at the finale moments of decline. The always balancing into an abyss, drug dazed pop punk of FOR MY FRIENDS have transformed into FAKE SHAKES which still has a bearded soul and an indolent but in every chord youthful sound that is performed by various kinds of kids who like to hang out, do crazy things as they are obsessed with climbing to high places while high and this has lead to many atrocities with people being protective about their roofs. Their warm hearted but cold faced melodic songs have rather filth and pining over let downs of either assholes or failed romances than about shining happiness of bubble gum pop. They are those weird kids who sit at the back of your house party and smash things not because they are here to destroy but only because they are like this. Nowadays I try to be late from their shows but since I’m that kind of guy who always there too early I always end up watching them and when I do I do not regret it.

LÖMBIHEAD was something like a quintessence of the Defekt scene with playing music they have figured out for themselves and having shows as weird as it could be or as how drunk they were. People getting naked, the band getting naked, then there was a solo, some improvised chant on teenage sadness fueled by frustration, just total chaos. After some line up changes and a semi-legendary last show they have formed TUMO with which they are writing new songs, having a slight different approach on strange music and they have a new drummer as well. Their music and lyrics still feel like it’s haunted by dementia or demons. They left behind the surf feel from their previous music and replaced themselves from a nuclear beach into a rotting garden where they play this Rev. Summer influenced SST vibe guitar jamming still punk based forever rock. Rock music for a fermenting society. Sticking to their awkwardness their live shows keep being strange, with changing instruments between members and looking as weird as it’s up to what drugs are influencing them in the moment. Having some trouble with finding a drummer and being disorganized nihilists they have only recorded two of their songs with slacking howling vocals but maybe the future is holding some luck for us and they will came out with a proper but still damaged release in the future. One thing for sure when they willing to play their instruments and focus a bit magic is happening and this utterly creative guitar jams start to work as perfect slacker punk songs for all your doubts and paranoia. You might follow.

For mutant rockers there is PISS CRYSTALS. Started out as a project of two friends who were in dozen bands so if one of their bands had to cancel a show out of boredom these two guys created PISS CRYSTALS to be a fill in band so they would be able to travel and play anyway. The weird mix of everything that J Mascis has ever done starting from DEEP WOUND through DINOSAUR JR. till riffing ‘Sabbath-ish doom with pinch influences of kraut rock, PISS CRYSTALS is a band of music buffs who wanna entertain themselves. Never been taken seriously, still they are a core of a scene of bored youth, thus always being a lot more than juts noise. Sometimes their rehearsals transform into a huge hangout where at one point everybody is freestyle rapping to dumb beats provided via a broken Casio. Live they always end their sets with freestyle rants against the punk scene’s stupidity. It is punk music because it’s played by punk kids who like music and weird ideas and noise and have enthusiasm over professionalism.

ZEN FASCISTS has formed from the ruins of PLAN BEER with taking a circle run and sitting behind different instruments but having almost the same members on different positions. The music that was once guitar driven and smart and punk now has turned into something more simple and threatening with it’s balanceless bouncing. Oi influenced noisy and grooving, aggressive hardcore with lyrics about being a loser and lost in social life. They are not menace, it’s the world that is and through their music and lyrics it’s even more bizarre. Rage fueled with awkwardness this band has the least hardcore look and the geekiest approach of playing fast punk music. The name comes from a DEAD KENNEDYS song so they have no romantic relation to such bad people as far right wing extremists. Having just a demo recorded and two shows played after rotting in a rehearsal room for years and finally recruiting a bass player for live shows and writing future riffs, ZEN FASCISTS is a new but a mostly promising band.

Another fine mutant band is Wryness. The most flaky pothead band of all. Started out as TEKKEN (yeah the video game) but after some line up changes they had their name changed as well. There is just something magical in the experience of witnessing WRYNESS play. I loved them all the time when they played in rehearsal rooms. That fragile beauty that they carry with being more of the visceral players of their instruments than trained ones. Their bass player learnt to play bass on a two days speed trip when he couldn't sleep so he figured out how to jam. Their sets are always paused by recesses to drink beer, smoke weed or huff some rush. Their music is strange. Since they attempted to make as many weird pacing changes in their music as they can. This makes the whole sound a collapsing one but on their middle tempo runs they emerge the floating paranoia of the kids of the black hole. Somehow the band is so little, still they could sound really huge. One by one their tracks would not stand out alone but over all especially in live or listening to their whole album to have your soul soaked in their desperate and desolated lyrics is an experience we always search for in punk music. It’s like old hungarian punk, or KAAOS. Finnish or Japanese hardcore. They sound like a group that has only read about hardcore and put it together in their heads not as if they have first hand experiences with the genre. It’s punk played by the beaten more like an idea of how they should sound and not following rules. They born outside the box.

MUDPIE is a quiet new band formed roughly a year ago. Their take on punk music is backed with longer songs which gave enough space for them to play out their post punkish post hardcore-ish riffs. They have weird melodies that are just as much catchy as it sucks you into a vortex of anxiety and gloom. They stay in mid tempo but the vocals are harsh and mostly screaming while the lyrics move on a personal level digesting everyday disappointments and bedroom frustrations. Their music is moving forward coming out from the headphones. They are awkward in a lovely way and beyond their never smiling live presence is some focused, teeth grinding will to play their songs in the best way. They are not changing the world or challenging you with their music still you can lose yourself in their flood of stretched out guitar riffs and relatable gloom.

VEX is a punk band with a bit raging and collapsing hardcore influenced music. Pure and fast, inspired by the early era of amazing west coast hardcore they also have some dry melodies infused into their sound. They are always rehearsing and occasionally playing with adorable awkwardness. Not melting anyone’s face still they are forcing out all the frustration from themselves. In a way they don’t seem to have too many ideas of how and what they wanna play, but they are doing it anyways cause they are sure they wanna do it. Strange pace changes and just lively ideas of the whole structure of songs with sometimes solos that sound like they are on psychedelic drugs. It’s fun to see them play and go along with their version of doing punk. I mean being drunk, being punk, being at a basement and seeing such bands is just magical, or it could be that and I’m glad that I belong to such a scene. Oh by the way all the members of VEX are girls.  

NORMS is a band where I sing so I try not to swallow my own dick too deep. We play fast hardcore punk soaked in disgusting noise.

Some bands bring the whole scene together with their unavoidable awesomeness that none of the followers of the various sub genres could deny.
HUMAN ERROR is one of the oldest running bands in Hungary who are still fresh and have not stopped for a second to take a break. They had myriads of members but still holding two original ones. They play merciless crust/grind music that is not a style I really love but their live sets are just pure energy of punk perfection this way becoming a devoted fan of theirs is not a tough job. They go way beyond genres and styles it’s just that force that is marching down from the stage in a form of an evil black mass that will push you down or grab you in. They have an agenda to clear out and set straight the confused minds who have been lost in the muddy forest of business grind and false punk. They hate their works and on their own way they are survivors because they have their eyes open enough to see the horrors of everyday and feel threatened by it. Not as if they are squatting and fighting the cops all the time, since in Hungary there’s no such thing as a squatter - street protest scene. It’s just that resistance that resonates in them. They are frequently touring and booking bands from all over Europe here in Budapest. Silently they climbed up to some legendary position that they have never self proclaimed. It’s simply staying true to what you are believing and doing it in the way you feel like it’s right. And at one point your shows will just become huge events in punk terms and people will bounce their every day struggle out from themselves on your shows. It’s not easy to keep a band running for 15 years and it only happens on very rare occasions that a band after this long time still could be fresh and not burnt out. They have just recorded an upcoming full length which is much anticipated. And seeing them on stage they are not a slight different from all the young kids blasting their music they play to escape high school reality. Only HUMAN ERROR’s angst is rooted deeper and they have less mercy. 

Their guitarist who was the latest addition to the band and has been playing for more than a decade in decent bands and in a way forming the face of Hungarian hardcore/punk but he is with them for 5 years now. He has a solo project called DISKOBRA which is a great mix of old Hungarian punk/hardcore and some DISCHARGE worship DIScore. The overall damaged flavor is coming together with drunk rage against the inexplicable bullshit of this world we are living in. His simple but sharp lyrics and plain but striking songs serve as a perfect background music if you are having an angst rush. It’s the voice of your friend who reminds himself how cruel life is sometimes and goes on diatribe rant at some point of a night spent with chugging cheap liquor. He plays live shows with a full band and the things that have been said between songs are just pooping the party that much that people realize the outside world is a trap and only our spaces could bring us temporary joy. It’s just good to see people slowly leaving their 30s still giving a fuck, doing new things and caring about the present and future rather than blame the now by glorifying their past because they have become old. People like him are as much inspiration as young kids having no fucking idea on what to play and just blast out wonderfully shitty noise. It’s the angst and endurance for still giving a fuck that is magic in everyone who are willing to create. And DISKOBRA is a total keeper of raw, fast and disgusting hardcore/punk.

CHAPPA’ AI is a noise band what is distant from our planet thus labeled as space grind made up with Stargate fans who share the drummer with DISKOBRA and HUMAN ERROR. This group of total creeps and misfits plays a confusing mix of speed freak grind and harsh noise. Somehow transforming their live shows into a performance art preformed by people who are the furthest from doing anything with art and performance. It’s their weirdness and love for bizarre noises that keeps the band running. And of course a shitloads of weed. 

RÁKOSI has become one of the other longest running bands of the scene who are loved by everyone. Starting as a guerrilla band who though uninvited showed up at random shows to take over the stage for their shocking 5 minutes sets. They have become one of the well known Hungarian bands since LENGUA ARMADA has released three of their demos on two 7”s. They still are about what’s mostly happening in their hometown where guitarist and singer still live. How the countryside is going bankrupt as much financially as morally. They have a strange method of writing songs since the last two demos were written and recorded during weekends. As the first note was played for the first time on a Friday afternoon, after they freshly had escaped from a week long work, on Sunday evening they had their new songs recorded. Somehow they are able to transform the hungarian frustration into punk hardcore perfection. With their shows becoming gatherings where the punk and hardcore kids find themselves among each other sweating their desperation out. Most of the people couldn't really understand the specific topics this band is singing about but they can feel the anger and scorn that they have. They do have the issue of being a bit stuck in Hungary since they only go if they are invited but even this way they still could stay fresh and as time goes by more people love them. What they deserve for sure. They are the absolute beast of the Hungarian punk noise wall that is standing as a defense of your frustration that you might have to shelter in your everyday but since it’s totally normal to have it and let it out sometimes their shows are the best places for this explosion.

The half of RÁKOSI lives in Szeged. Szeged is a little treasure box near to the Serbian border. It’s a small city with few people who are willing to sacrifice too much of their time to from new bands on every weekend, rot in rehearsal rooms for endless hours and book cool shows. Most of the bands are sharing members since seemingly the whole city has only two drummers for eight bands. The method is, instead of packing everything they like in every music into one band they create new bands for all the micro-sub-genres they like and listen to. One thing is sure, most of the bands are heavily guitar driven. Let it be the cornerstone of the modern scene KEMÉNY HENRIK with all members from ex and current bands. Playing music that is post. Not the sounds of future but they are bringing the post from everything especially from hardcore / punk and while it’s being a fact that they are playing punk, they play their guitars that much and have an overall sound that launches them into their own space. It’s funny since the members out of the stage seem so unorganized and strange while on stage and on record there is full control. Lyrics are varying between Hungarian and English and it’s just amazing punk profession that they play.

Bands connected to this group are ARGUMENT CLINIC who are bringing the modern interpretation of the core Ramones-ish music with finally a singer who could use a bit his voice and they for sure are delivering catchy melodies and BERKUT who are a new group formed from IMPERIAL SPIES and RÁKOSI and SPARK and KEMÉNY HENRIK. Being a tornado of guitar sounds BERKUT (written with ciril fonts) is crushing, interesting, challenging, untamed force of smart rage. Like a formula that knows what and how will destroy. They only played few official and non official secret shows and a demo is about to be recorded. The future is unwritten.

This town is a perfect example for if you have the good people and the will you will make great things together. Do you wanna conquer the world? All right, but even if you don’t succeed you will need people around you, you can hang with, sit through nights in bars or play the best music is possible: Your music. Organize shows, or just cook offs. Movie clubs and collective radio shows. Have million other bands there and just be supportive. Try to do Food not Bomb cooking for the homeless. Fill bars with their yelling. Open their farm for festivals and recording sessions. This is what Szeged does.

 

Just like Győr and it’s region. That place for me feels like a bubble. With so many strange and alienated kids. During this summer I went there to play at a local festival. It was amazing. There was one point when I was hanging in this kitchen of a nice family house. Four shaved headed guys were around me. They are YOUTH VIOLENCE. I was eating their pizza, they were eating freshly picked cherry. Making fun of each other, throwing the cherry stone on each other. They were worried of whether they could buy weed later or not. Few hours later in a room that was dripping in sweat they just start to execute all your hope. With homemade distortion pedals and with homemade anger they start to boom. Their music is fast the lyrics are desperate and angry in another level. It’s just pure hate of the unfair world that is keeping them in constant struggle. But also it’s the sound of joy that they still could give a fuck enough to transform this into something so powerful that through projecting the daily shit something beautiful comes out.

Their bass player and drummer have another project called WHO SAWS VIOLENCE REAPS STORM. More complex and darker band with literary-like lyrics about all the familiar sufferings. The members look so weird like they have their own little world which I’m almost sure they really do.

Life in Hungary could be a struggle and they say from such a desolated soil great things could grow out. Artistically and not biologically. There is one band that is just robbing everyone’s heart with their honesty of how they are painting their picture of every days spent with surviving the oppression. It’s ANOTHER WAY. Having a member who is working 12 hours shifts at a shitty blown out industry and other two members being all around the world all the time to release a new full length it toke many years for them. Once an unstoppable band that just played everywhere for almost nothing but played there hearts out all the time seemed to be vanished for some years. Having line up changes and inner conflicts they are back and everybody is bowing their heads in front of them. ANOTHER WAY is basically three weirdos playing as fast as they are angry and they are really angry. They are originated in a small rural town in Hungary with no hope so they paved their way out from this reality with every raging song they have written. You can call it fastcore, power violence, hardcore or punk. This is just angry music played in Hungary by people who still do care and kept hanging on to their teen angst. With some metallic riffing after taste. This band is another universe. They live by their on terms and while the whole scene is watching what are they up to they are just going on their own way. Hermits of the punk scene who appear to show how and what their universe is. The much anticipated full length that has been delivered this year is a great testament of their still burning torch. With having parts where even they couldn't keep up with the speed they are playing on, still they are a nonstop ugly terror that pours on you as a tsunami.  

Those who not only seek self relief but have a bigger plan with all this, they are RIVERS RUN DRY and their label / collective the DZSUKHELL RECORDS. RIVERS RUN DRY has started out as something like epic or neo-crust with three guitars and very long songs. But since two of the members are living in different squats in different countries seeing them in all together when not on tour is as rare as seeing the whole WU TANG CLAN on one stage. Now they have perfected this dark-heavy sound into something that is no longer crust or punk but just this dark mass that is sucking you in and not letting you out. With having enough span and space in their songs for the instruments to send out on adventure missions there is always something that could grab you. To be honest I like music that is simpler and less constructed but live even I could be a believer since they are so heavy and unstoppable. Also they are carrying a distro with books, zines, records. They are putting shows and releasing records from the local scene. Proving it’s not such an extra job to put or keep some meaning in all this. Heard their rehearsals feel like a picnic with eating cakes, drinking tea and discussing issues of life. These guys are strong column of the Budapest diy scene.  

This is it.

most of the bands' music (among other local bands) could be found here: http://heart-a-tact.blogspot.hu/

CREEM interview / report

Creem is hailing from New York. A city with great history of hardcore/punk. In the very recent past this city and the whole East Coast is on a huge boom, being the nest of myriads of amazing hardcore/punk bands. Creem is one of them who made their name with creating an authentic mix of punk/hardcore/oi. They not only sound like a combination of genres but they are writing a soundtrack for living this misfits life.  

What a surprise I have fucked it up again. Maybe it’s a curse. Could be, since it’s the second Creem interview that disappeared before it could have been transcribred and printed on the pages of MRR.

Who cares, I’m writing the story anyway. It will be different since Creem is not your average hardcore band. I know what we do is hardcore and punk but there are times you can tell there is a fine line between the two genres. Time goes by as trends come and go. Sometimes the whole world feels like just one big scene, other times there is just too much shit talk with throwing around labels like bro-core or gutter punk.

And here is Creem who just merges everything. Hardcore with oi, punx with skins at hardcore shows held in basements. Everybody just goes for the kicks and having fun, while leaving behind the everyday frustration. They rip, they smile. They put on Wire records and sing along, compliment on Hegel books, they say sick all the time and seem a bit too obsessed with instagram. They climbed on street walls and tried to lift up a one seated tiny car. Bringing some ruckus for fun of course. They are touring along with Nuclear Spring with whom they share a member as well, Colman, who is a nice gentleman and who  seems to keep the tour together.

We started the interview after a long night spent with partying and stuffing our faces with midnight munchies. Everybody was kinda tired, I was way too drunk since I had brushed my teeth with a good morning beer. We were tripping on European coffee which for the US bodies might have caused panic attacks and to be honest I felt weird as well. Planet Mental was silently playing in the background and constant nu-metal jokes were flying around. These guys were full with patches, some of them stank of beer but were articulated, funny and punk. We missed to detail who plays on which instrument, we forgot to be ironic or try to be pathetically funny. What we had was a great, seemingly two- hour conversation on life as a punk in New York or all around the world. Of course we were specific about them but it was more of how they, as individuals see this whole thing. Mostly it was Colman (bass on Creem and Nuclear Spring), Mike (Guitars on Creem) and Jay (drums on Creem and Hounds Of Hate) speaking. Alex (Vocals in Creem) was quiet but when he started speaking he said such great things. Reggie who also plays the guitar stayed silent which is a bummer because out wild on the streets of my town he was just an unstoppable force of energy and fun. The Nuclear Spring fellows seemed to be hung over too much but Lauren (guitars and vocals) sometimes gave her two cents to the table as well as Rob (bass in Nuclear Spring) but he seemed way too tired.

I started out by asking them what they thought about the fact that back in the day people rather just had ideas of what frustration they wanted to put into or express through their music and weren’t thinking about specific sounds but now bands seem to have an idea of what they wanna sound like either in music or in images of what will happen at their shows. The bio they gave me anyway told me that all of them lived in one huge house and at one show that they were setting up they started jamming Chunks from the Last Rights and Alex filled in for vocals and that’s when they learned that he can sing.

Spontaneous yet satisfying fun turned into semi- serious business and this is how Creem was born. They had no specific plan for their music to unite everybody who has ever liked fast, short, noisey music. They had no such intentions. Today it’s still just mostly Mike delivering riffs after nights spent listening to GISM and Poison Idea.

They are a bit bummed on how everyone is comparing them to the Boston-sound while,  as they said, it was just one guy and the rest only borrowed his description. For them it’s more like Negative Approach. For me it’s Life’s Blood and they took it as a compliment.

Later on we talked about how everybody who has a specific agenda or plan to sound like something pretentiously new or pre-planned only to achieve desired circumstances with their music will end up failing. It should rather come from instinct as they say. So they had no idea in terms of what will happen to this band, how will they specifically sound or what should people’s reaction be to their music.

Drunkenly I kept on visioning aggro skinheads on lsd crawling on the ceiling but even though they liked this picture for themselves they said it’s enough if people come and seem interested in what they are doing. It just happened the way it is now.

At one point Mike started to talk about how Crass mixed avant-gardism with punk plus weird art and ended up sounding like they were recorded through a mobile phone which is strange since there were no mobiles back then. And it still sounded visceral and natural, not forced or pre-planned, but if every band went for this, most of them would just end up being terrible.

The conclusion around the table was: for big things you need specific times.

We talked about the need for progression in punk. Either in sound or ideas. But since it’s established as much as a culture could be there is no need for progression if you like one specific thing that feels complete.

They just wanna do their thing.

Still, even though punk has many tools people can choose from to express themselves, it is not yet something that is easy to adapt to with only rationalizing and understanding it instead of feeling it cause when people try to analyze and learn punk they always fail. This is why academics couldn’t understand punk since they don’t have the heart just the brain for it. It still feels like we are holding ourselves for a secret.

 And who wants big things anyway?

We started to talk about lyrics, of how important they are in the sense of saying something new or original or whether these are just also tools, instruments in the mouth of the singer. Alex said his lyrics were simple but are completely his own and just as a power chord that had been played before, even these lines mean a lot for him and could express parts of his view on the world.

But these guys are much more than just regular kids feeling angry of not having brotherhood in the pit. How you tell your story also matters and this guy, while on stage looking like a frightening manic psychopath staring with wide open eyes on the ceiling and never smiling, loses his vicious look when the band finishes their last note and he just transforms into a smiling, charming young man who is fun to have around even if he is moshing on the streets with a plastic bag full of instant ramen soup in his hands or talking about post-modern dystopian books.

We discussed bands with agendas. Crass again and Earth Crisis got mixed in one sentence and we all together started to realize around the table that bands with the intent to change the world have disappeared and punk has just become so culturalized that we don’t really need the world to change. Maybe just ourselves. Which could be depressing for some but maybe just as the world has opened itself people have just closed up themselves, thus this culture has become one’s frustration. And since hardcore punk has become a culture you can indulge yourself in it.

I was curious how they saw themselves in the future. As heard, some people plan to leave punk behind but they did not seem to have such intentions. Colman didn’t think he would ever give up playing guitar.

Then Alex broke his silence with a long speech about punk being so much more essential in one’s life and thus being much much more than just going to shows, knowing bands, forming bands or dressing the way we do. It should be with you in your everydays as well while the world is forcing you to change and be a conformist. It’s the attitude. It could be with you even if you have a family and kids and you are over 40 and although it’s hard to leave it behind you are tempted every day if you wanna operate and survive in the world that surrounds you. I listened to him and lost myself in his words which again in my morning daze of tiredness and boozing were pretty touching.

On the one hand I feel comfortable that I understand him when hearing that it’s much more than the rest of the world thinks and then I get frightened whether  we are just far too gone into our own world. Maybe because I was still drunk, but he just made so much sense.

This is a struggle and we are kinda losing it but there are people still fighting, staying young, smart and ugly.

We started to talk about the gentrification of New York cause sooner or later it would happen to all the cities and we could be thrown out of all the spaces that real people made cool. They said the city has changed even though it’s still a huge and strange town but they also enjoy the everyday life of middle class bourgeois and feel themselves a bit wrong in it too.

They are just broke kids too, who wanna have cheap rents and not be bothered. But despite everything they didn’t seem scared or sad. Only Colman was a little worried when he said he might have lost his job for this tour but Lauren started to calm him down stating he did not know it for sure yet.

We could agree in one thing: punk life is not the normal one and sometimes you have to come to terms with the nonsense bullshit. But these guys still live in the same house and just hate to work.

The New York scene seems to be on boom who remembers since when. They said maybe Perdition was the band who kicked life into the city, but nowadays a lot of young kids are attending shows and forming bands. It could be that there are 300 people at a regular gig and everybody is going crazy, doing something crazy. New bands are being appreciated and there is just life in the scene. Bands are hanging out, since there are many bands with shared members. Lauren is in La Misa and some of them just formed a new band called Garbageman, which as they stress it, is a real band.  

Since this interview was done in Eastern Europe I asked them about the differences between touring Europe and the States. They came here with door deal and the only requirement in the booking sheet was to make them feel at home and book them a diy show. Although every night they got food and a place to sleep they still said it’s cheaper to tour in the US since the gas price compared with Europe is still amazingly low.

And although Europe has a better infrastructure in hosting bands it’s maybe better for those acts who are kinda nameless in the states but here they are big hits. They forgot to name examples, but we all know those that came to life because they were too stupid to go to college and too lazy to work so they formed a hardcore band with an always changing line-up to rip off madball songs and tour the world.

A friend of mine told me once that for Europe the seemingly cruel conditions of touring the states makes a contra-selection of bands and emphasizes the rock and roll gene in American bands. Kinda like either you are super good and then will survive or you are not even officially born. Creem seemed to argue that this is not the case. Not just because they have seen Slang from Japan lately who blew them away but because again, touring America is not that hard as they say and bands who tour a lot and have been playing for a long time sound cool. The fuel is cheaper and there will be people to book you, at least in their living rooms. So there is no such thing as rock and roll gene in Americans. It’s all about playing a lot of shows and focusing on how to play them.  

At the end of the interview I realized that everything that had been said got lost and we could only rely  on the capacity of our memories. But we don’t have to worry because, as their driver Sascha summoned it up, it was just a bunch of bullshit anyway.

#367 - kinda

Hi, I'm Viktor i like to think about 10000 things at the same time and be confused and lose my attention over things like pressing the send button. That's why there is no column from me in #367. I wrote it, i have attached it to a mail but forgot to send it and i stayed in my draft map until i have sent my column for #368. But here it is. I will soon update my Hungarian Scene Report and Creem interview/report from #367.

 I had to go to the supermarket to have feeling. All I got was depression but I had my baggy pants on. Zerozero style I wanna piss in the face of the world.

Sometimes when I get really drunk I start to think about the universe. Other times I just ramble my fandom towards John Peel. This only happens once or twice a year but it happens. Then I start to stare on the sky if I’m lucky and could see the stars through the industrial dust that is a polluted curtain above my city. And think about the planet, think about life and everything. It makes no sense since I don’t think life makes any sense. Maybe it’s a joke maybe it’s a problem but not a task, or shouldn't be. Then I start to think about songs what are about space. Not Fury’s Space Love. Even if I should.
Whenever I read about dinosaurs I want to see them, whenever I read about space I want to be there, whenever I read about planets I want to observe them. But I just stay in my room and sometimes wonder out to get drunk and see bands play. My interaction with people are very rare cause I adore them but couldn't bear them. That’s alright I guess. The best thing in humanity is that our brains are sensitive enough that thank to imagination that can be triggered by emotions which are caused by art we can feel that we are floating in space. Sometimes when I’m in a room that are lacking that much stimulus I can start to hallucinate. It happened when I was making out with girls in dark rooms that had nothing but a mattress and a lovely lady who thought I'm good enough to get my tongue licked by her. Music can do the same things to me as literature. Only thing that sucks is I need to see more bands who are this cool. I wanna see how different they are than to how I imagined them and observe what they vision while they are performing their music. It’s a risky game cause lot of times nothing happens.
I was at a Blake Schwarzenbach solo show and I got goose bumps. A bit later he was standing in my kitchen telling me how English rappers are while I was fixing him a scrambled egg for breakfast. He made me imagine outer space experiences while I’m not the biggest Jawbreaker fan.
Last night I went to a show and I felt the space opening in my chest. It wasn't a decent feeling. I’m kinda depressed and confused these days what a surprise I guess exhibiting my life for more than a year now here made you a picture of how everyday life as a Hungarian punk is filled with melancholy. Yesterday bands played good. Or great I don’t know. It’s hard to say something is good when you feel they had spent a huge amount of time writing their music, practicing, and spending money on buying equipment, learn how to use them and still they end up with something I don’t like. I’m the one to blame and my taste in music. I just rather like when there are millions of bands and a few of them don’t suck. I like the humans and failure as I have said it many times. But I feel more and more disconnected with hanging at shows doing those routines with talking about things that could be said in two words. I love to hang and have conversations that are conversations not just people telling their shit and leave you. Stop this pointlessness. I’m going to shows for the punk plus. Because I like to see people presenting their ideas, their lives. I would be there if I didn't know anyone. I’m not in this for the party. Music is for the disconnected, for those who want more even if they have enough. Punk is more than music and either if it’s a threat or a protection it’s connected to some feelings what only those people own who are lacking something or want more. Even though I don’t wanna feel the void I think I want to be punk forever cause I can’t see any other thing to be or do in this life.
The only sense a person could chase through existence is I think to be happy. And music can make you that. Cause it doesn't consume your time. It escorts your moments. It makes them better. It’s just awesome. It’s danger. I like danger. I feel frightened all the time and I fuck up almost everything. I chase some ghost down hills while I’m drunk and I always fall on my face. I hate it but still it’s my life. You think it’s boring? You are right. You think it’s cool? Write jokes. That’s cool this could be done by anyone. 

Music. Nowadays I have found myself fooling around with guitars in my head. Playing music and trying to understand it a bit sometimes are opening my focus on listening to music a bit wider. I don’t mean I care more about techniques and skills. It’s just I listen to the already heard differently or being more open to jam some new shit. I have this thing with kraut rock and new wave nowadays and that mixed with ambient. Or whatever is what Eno and Harmonia has produced. Those were great jams to listen to when you are hangover and have to work. Just put on a headphone and relaxing time is on with it not being too hippy.

I was also blasting some fragile punk hardcore. I always come home with the desire to stay home even at weekend days and blast the Minor Threat discography. I end up walking around the town among drunken hordes of normal people and listening to the Fall and Fix. Or just regular dumb music.

Stupidity is an amazing tool when used by smart people. Dumbness is nothing to be proud of in this day an age of living on the informational highway but it’s one of the interesting things to fool around with when it can be a useful tool in your hands. This week I was watching Rival Mob videos on youtube and I have to say that band rocks live. Not to say they are dumb just because the territory of their genre is simple thus it’s not super easy to do something remarkable with a limited arsenal. But their glaze seems to be some traditional hardcore ignorance. Does it make them an ironic band? A bit. Is irony the curse of contemporary living? It is. Does this make them a band that leads us to decay? Nothing leads real punx anywhere so they are fun to listen to although I will stick to YouTube videos. And still I’m going with Boston Stranglers and Prisoner Abuse. Or Step Forward. Those bands are dirtier or less loud in the message board culture louder in my walkman. Step Forward was sick.
This night while I was trying to put together a tape’s cover I was blasting some vinyl. DYS, Siege, Violent Minds, Talking Heads and Hygiene. All dumb bands who are amazing. Primitivism is a pure form of emotions and sharp thoughts that is focused on survival. If music is nothing to help go through a life I don’t know what it is. Thus listening to dumb music is useful. As much as writing dumb columns so stick with me next month as well FOOLZ! 

#366

Always late never on time.

We played that reunion show with my first band this last Friday and it was strange. Even my parents came. My mother always told me i shouldn't scream cause it’s not good for my health and jumping on each other makes no sense.
When we finished our set i went right to them to tell her without her silent support, of letting me fuck up my life however i wanted, this could have never happened. Both of my parents liked our set a lot. The room was full with energy. It was a reunion so nostalgia and shit. All of us still have bands and most of us are playing together, touring together, and having fun together. The crowd was full with young kids, with our friends who are frequently attending shows so it was just a great night with fun, fun, fun.
Before we started playing i was siked to play that much i couldn't concentrate on anything else. I also don’t like when i have too many friends in the building and i feel like i have to split up among them to spend as much time with everyone as i think they would deserve. I ended up wondering around in the crowd sipping my beer looking for cool shirts that the bored youth wears as a statement.

At the after party i was dancing with my ex girlfriend and almost got kicked out of the place because i was making a phone call from the women’s bathroom.

Have i listened to music lately? I have heard the new Hoax for sure which is a great record. I liked them, then hated them, then i have spent night watching many of their live videos on youtube, then bought an lp and still didn't know what to think. This new lp is great though. Finally they sound close to what the hype around them is. Still think it’s like Exploited on double speed but making an lp in this day of age in the hardcore genre and not failing with it is an achievement. I wish i had more thought on them but i go for feelings when it comes to hardcore and punk. No conspiracy theory or thesis.

I have seen a Blitz video where they are playing live at some tv studio and it’s amazing. They are no doubt fucking high on speed the drummers beats his kit standing and when they finish playing you can see how angry they are on the reporter’s stupid questions. I think this is art to live like this. It’s also art what their music is.

I was in the supermarket the other day and got utterly depressed. Don’t know why but i did and it was just terrible. The only thing that made me not wanna lay down on the floor and weep was the fact that i can listen to music that is about these feelings and when i realize even from such shit beautiful things could be created i will be happy. And here I am writing this column while blasting Sonskull and Soul Swallower.

Today i restarted cooking. Made napa cabbage cold slaw and home made pizza. While i was jamming Really Red, Blank Stare, Comet Gain, Crazy Spirit. I wanna buy more records and books even if i will not listen to them all the time or make myself read them. I am afraid in a way everybody else will by books and i will end up not being able to read anything. Something that might not happen since no one is fucking buying anything that is not coming through them something machinery. But that’s alright.

The new Criminal Damage is great. Seems like everybody who is not skinhead is making great Oi! music. Writing this sentence made me wanna put up my Wipers lp cause it’s after midnight and i want those jams be my guide to the punk source of my brain. Flesh World is amazing. The one song i have heard but still that band can’t be not amazing.

There is just something really minor in music that makes all the bands i love great. I can’t tell you what it is because it’s not a secret. Or it’s THE secret. Anyway i'm glad i think i know it when i hear it.

Fuck, why is time the worst invention by man? It’s even worse then god or money.

I know too many random thoughts but this is what you get. I still love my new job even though i’m in a lot of stress because i haven’t figured out how to do it in the best way. But it’s kinda cool to work somewhere where people talk about Death in the office, i mean the Detroit one. And i could wear whatever cloths i want while i do something that i feel like has some sense. Or i will be thrown out after the intern period. Will find out.

I seriously hate to think about orders among bands i like even when i’m going through what was the best record of the year. But it just popped into my head that Total Control is might be the best band around nowadays. I know Sub Pop bla bla. Still they are combining almost every music that is amazing in this world and doing it with nothing but the pure love of sounds. Their singer is a graphomaniac hardcore guy, David West is in this band, one of the guys is a sound engineer and i love James, their drummer. Somehow they can translate their songs into the love of music which is one of the best thing that could happen to a band.
I also forgot to mention that an awesome Russian guy has visited Budapest and he gave me his band’s ep. Worshit. Unstoppable, vicious, Negative Approach fandome with a lot of filth. This shit rules and as he told me stories about how is it hard and weird to live in Russia I can understand their angst. On the other hand you can read all those horrible stories about everywhere. Is it the same everywhere? Corruption, cruelty, hatred, boredom, the lack of future? Why are humans so obsessed with future? Fuck all this. I’m sick I mean I have a sore throat not that there’s something up with my mind. It’s a gift that we can transform the world’s shit into our treasure. So fuck apathy! Make a tape!

norms - minden jó

kinda fun to have many artsy fartsy members in your band so you could convince them that doing weird shit is a good thing to be filmes.

#365

Whoops. It’s getting seriously deadline time. And it’s 1:43 am I’m dead tired, I just came back from a show and I will play a show tomorrow on a boat for people who dress better than I do and after the painfully hang over morning I will travel to another town to hang with people. Streaming New Order’s performance Taras Shevchenko session right now. Writing a pamflett against a band and our government. Reading too much of the middle-east situation and foreign wars. Proxy wars. Whatever. Sometimes I wanna do serious things here like no cursing and being a bit more journalistic or literaturical or other things. Like not saying “and shit” all the time. Other times I just wanna be like how I like to be. Like a bad dream of a weird memory. No order, full blown emotional wreck, drugs, anti jokes. Don’t know If anyone is reading this. I do skip some of the other columnists because the subjects I care about is not what they write about. As John Peel said the problem is with those who listen not who are providing something to listen to. Except if you are being a spokes man for child molestation. I’m doing so many other things for MRR now I kinda forgot I have to do this as well and since all of my texts need heavy edition I need more time.

Also please if you like what I do here check my blog too. Since that not only has extended versions of my columns but sometimes they are less edited = more weird. To be honest I don’t really remember what has happened since I wrote my previous column. It should not be due to drugs since i can’t remember the last time I smoked weed. Probably at some park. My first band will do a reunion show in support of one of our friends who is having health issues. I’m not really a big fan of reunions and somehow it depresses me that to get people’s attention you need to reform something that happened years ago. But on the other hand we see it as a nice gesture. This friend of ours went away to work and live in London. He is one of the coolest, most energetic and dedicated people I know. He is just pure positive energy. He is sxe hardcore, I’m a drunk loser punk. At one point we stoped our daily conversations but I never thought we went cold. He is just a person I will always like. And now it’s heartbreaking he has to re-learn to do things which seem so natural for all of us. This way it’s the least we can do to re-learn some of our old songs and just like we did to perform them as hard as we can.

I missed playing with those 4 guys but truth be said I’m in a band with one of them and frequently hanging and touring with the others. With getting a bit confused on ecstasy of reunions I started planning to organize a local festival with local bands to show the country there is punk worth feeling threatened by. Sometimes I think about maybe punk is no longer a threat it’s more of a protection. Also with just lining up all the local bands for this fest I felt like I have to do a scene report. So be prepared. I think the key for a good scene is that you should just appreciate the good things. And the good things are not only a world wide hype. There are millions of bands like Iceage around you but they are better but to realize why you just have to listen and not only be told. Just today I was listening to this band called Ragana and I have no fucking idea who they are and what they do but their demo is rad. You just have to be happy and with punk around you it’s not that difficult.

I was also rereading layla’s review of my zine. And it made me wonder back to those times when I did it. Also to times when she was writing columns which she should do again. And for fuck sake I should finish my fanzines and I should finish my scene report and sort out pictures for the interviews I made and finish this column. I have started working as an unpaid intern for a news site which is cool I guess. I have never wanted to be a journalist because I know I have no intention to keep a proper word order and I could not give a flying fuck about gramer. But I do like to write and I do hate the government and assholes who I can just in a micro way piss off and it’s just so cool. The first time I had to call around government offices to fact check something about corruption in a district and it turned out those pigs are dirty as shit I was just so happy that I could be the part of busting the balls of those assholes. I always thought having a job is not important. I mean what you work shouldn’t be the most important thing in your life. But for the first time doing something daily for 8 hours what I like to do and in a way feel capable to do it, it’s just really rewarding. 

Ah fuck, I’m out of step with the world. I barely listen to any new bands which I really should cause I want to but I’m lazy as shit too with reading books and watching movies. I can’t remember when was the last time I cooked something that is a meal not just fried eggs or a cheese sandwhich with mushrooms. But I eat out a lot. Who cares? When did food become the new rock and roll? The new Svenonious book on rock and roll and mostly on life is really worth reading. I think I seriously did not listen to any music last month. But we recorded a new demo that will be out on vinyl. I rode a bike drunk for long hours and after that I have slept in a Christian dorm’s chapel almost naked with one hand in a glass of booze. I did not piss myself. I was at a garden party and a seventeen year old girl told me to fuck off in a punk way because my band covered a lame song at one of our shows out of a joke. But how cool is this teen girls being punk and telling old farts like I’m to fuck off. I just did mushroom alone while my friends were sitting around me and it was so weird to talk about people breaking their edge. Who gives a fuck? It’s not about burning out, I respect all my friends who are still straight edge but for fuck sake there are things in life that is still punk but matters a lot more. At the end Marx wasn’t a Marxist so please realize forced ideologies are killing us. I should force some fucking counter culture on me cause I’m being afraid I will become lazy and boring.

#364

Thank whatever higher power for being kicked in the face at shows or falling on the floor with my face enough times to have a nose that is completely useless except for serving as a target of anti-Semites and making me unable to smell the punk life that should be circling in my room right now. This is written from a worn out bed among possibly stinky sheets. And the ride has not ended. This week I had three bands in my flat on two nights and shit has happened. Now I’m listening to my gifted Wipers lp through my headphone and getting paranoid as the caffeine is sneaking out from me and my good night beer kicks in. Will grill some mushrooms for a cheese sandwich later. Gosh I ordered some ‘shrums. Future tripping. Also jamming Kinks, the early recordings. And Gas Rag as yesterday I was in a wild van that was cruizin around my town looking for the right bar and blasting this particular band’s demo, full with punx singing along and spilling shit on each other. I still think every single day that Gun Outfit’s new album is the best thing ever, their totally dreamy music is for those who will sleep when they are dead and stay awesome while alive and awake. I’m gonna lay down in the grass and let the sky suck me in while I blast this from a broken stereo. It is meant to connect you with things beyond objects and time. Why are things that are damaged able to tell the truth in a better way? I just wanna eat pizza in my bed, beat the shit out from my computer in chess and surround myself with art. Other people’s art. Whatever. I started to appreciate architecture since last Saturday when I had to spend some time in a dystopian-failed-futuristic, now-rotting-in-it’s-own-shit train station in my country and was watching neo nazi skinheads drinking beer in a happy way while I was just wondering about my glory days spent in the Rat / Xerox van while yeah, I was listening to Gun Outfit. I love music, and I can’t believe how good it is. The whole thing. All the bands. The feeling that it’s not certain. It’s not what you see, it’s not what the story should be. It’s only noise that resonates in your head and the rest is up to you. I love The Pin Group with their spooky, gloomy, wonderfully strange sound which might be familiar to you if you have ever had strange thoughts like still finding warmth on a cancelled beach day, or The Packs with their mellow power of bright darkness, Krakdown, Psycich TV single collections with the greatest lover of all time. Genesis P Ordige is a weird human and I hate myself for having stucked to the attitude and rather playing a show with my band than seeing him perform on PTV3’s final tour in my town. I’m so obsessed with that The Fall song Barmy that I wish Mark E Smith would have taken an E when they played the Hacienda. And listening to Siege, DYS and New Order till the sun comes up. Or getting high every night for a week via my pipe and watch early videos of Meat Puppets, Die Kreuzen and Das Damen for endless hours. I should finish my zines. And my short stories. People, do your shit and be better than me. I wanna listen to bands that start with a C. Sometimes I want to do so many things that I end up doing nothing but thinking on how I could watch movies and listen to music at the same time. I love music that sounds like puking at 4 am and I like fanzines that read like they were written in one night and their authors just created another universe on their pages. I have been to so many good shows lately. And I saw My Bloody Valentine and When You Sleep is still better than almost anything else. Like a wake up kiss from a deep sleep. Music for the dreamers. These sounds are like secret visions going on in your head that they surprisingly seem to know about, at the concert they sounded like the 90s, the whole decade, which was, by the way, so weird and emotionally exhausting that at one point I felt like something will just end. I feel this nowadays very often,too. Doomsday or finally heaven? Will find out.

Kriegshog is cool. I love hardcore that is not hardcore. Or not played by either mentally or physically healthy people. I just want that over-the-edge madness to be the hard in the core not just replaced by studio production and tuning down. I love that Japanese bands can’t really speak English still they are obsessed with writing lyrics in English and thus use their lyrics and the language as another instrument. Still there is that amazing frustration coming through their words from the singers’ throats. So Good. Zyanose is super sick.

Bands we booked in the recent past: Divided Minds, Black Gust, Creem, Nuclear Spring, Sickoids, Rank / Xerox, Rat Columns. The Divided Minds, Black Gust show got cancelled if you can call no electricity in a club a cancellation, so we replaced the gig to our rehearsal room. Hordes of drunk punks showed up from nowhere and were dancing wild with their skateboards in the fucking filth. The show was great, noisy and everything. Balkan desperation at its best. Leather jackets, patch distros. Black Gust is all the filth you can summon from your collection of kdb hardcore bands. As if germs were born into Zagreb, fed on glue. Chronic Sick with nice people, who after all still puke into your parents’ bed. Especially live, mostly in a dirty rehearsal room. Divided Minds is also hardcore but more from the Beach Blvrd era: stoned, pure raging, with lightly distorted guitars and controlled rage, very weird and powerful.

The day after this show my band and local noise makers CHAPPA'AI played a flat show in a city central house’s third floor. No neighbors, no cops. Sick shows, weird crowd, no punks but at least a girl came in a black flag shirt. People said that while singing I looked as if I could kill someone. Sorry I just have emotions. I was only paranoid that the floor will collapse and we will fell into another resident’s flat from the ceiling.

Creem and Nuclear spring were amazing. The show was tight, even some Hassid guy came down to be a pogo monster and kick up everybody in pit. But they are amazing as people too. You wouldn’t expect a hardcore band say siiick on your Hegel book and quote randomly Slavoj Zizek but they did and were just really cool people. Sickoids also, what a band, what a humble, quiet, awkward but lovely group of individuals who can do a massive and loud destruction when playing their desperate punk hymns. Awkward raging. At one point they just got so drunk that when we went out for cruzin and boozing with them we even sent a picture of our balls to the compound.

I have three bands now. There‘s lots of work, things are overdue all the time and my ears started to ring. But I have written a song that is just a very dumb psychedelic menace oi-core, so funny I was wearing a second hand fred perry shirt. I practice songs at nights and I only drink coffee on rehearsals.

Now I’m chugging beers but it’s a Sunday. And blasting Bad Brains. I should make a tape. You should make a scene. Or just stay up late enough so that your brain starts to process by itself. I feel like I’m losing my edge. I swear I haven’t listened to Crass in months but day by day I just see less point in all of this. How we go and play along with this punch line-less comedy, measuring ourselves and putting price tags on everything we do. But everybody can do almost anything if they are not totally stupid. There is money that is going in circles and seriously it is just given around and there you go, join your circle or shut up. Bow your head to the bullshit. I think I just wanna be happy and that’s all. Many times I envy people and more times I envy them for things I don’t even want. To be honest what I want is just to feel safe and be able to say no. So first I should feel safe, then I should be asked and then I could say no.

These are all just random thoughts typed out from a damaged brain through several 10 minutes of permanent midnights. Feelings. Nowadays I’m obsessed with record reviews. Ones that tell stories, situations, circumstances. There is music that captures a scene, a landscape, a mood and those couldn’t be sweated down to be described as simple songs played by musicians with instruments. These noises that surround music couldn’t be learnt to be fabricated. It’s on the dirt of the pants the bands are wearing, the glue that they are puking out while singing, the desperation they are carrying around even after leaving their rooms. We can hear and understand these, feel them. Not knowing them fully but just being sure that yeah I got it. Some things are just hard to transcribe. These are when you wanna punch something but don’t know what and why, you just shake your hands in happy delusion. And you wanna do things, wanna escape from something to be in the light, just spin around and cry while you are laughing. While real life shouldn’t mean that much to us. We rather roll around in sauna-like vans and talk about silly youtube videos and unknown records or are trapped in stoned daze in a strange kitchen / backstage discussing telepathy and fate or dumb hardcore singers and shell shock rock bands. Listening to kraut rock and paranoid wave, ndw feel. Soviet sounds. Music that was composed on soulful computers bleeping the binary sadness of modern life. I think Rank / Xerox is the best band ever, they are violent and collapsing while it feels all the time they are keeping the control, and even though they are some of the nicest people I have met there is something very outsider in them especially when they perform. Purely amazing and universal. I will interview them so you could be disciplined too. Do you know that feeling when a band is playing and it just feels like they are not just understanding whatever you are going through but they also made a soundtrack for it? So it feels like you understand them and thus you and the band are just one and then it becomes a huge US. Now I feel lucky, now I feel that life sometimes is amazing. I have read one sentence in their van and I’m gonna leave you with that: Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! – Nabokov.

fuck fact-core!

# 363

If I think about what is the essence of MRR for me I have to say it’s a 16 year old punker interviewing Kathleen Hanna or reading about Complicité Candied on the first when they made it to the first place in one of the ex coordinators’ top ten of decade zerozero list. I live one country away from the Czech Republic and have never heard of this band. Still it states that if you do something what is really good you will be recognized.
It’s a lie to say we are all equal in punk cause for sure if you are in a crust band your chances are higher to be recognized if you are hailing from Scandinavia or Japan. If your scene is on fire you will be in spotlight too and for sure bands will get more attention who are from western countries, have better economy, more established roots in punk history etc. This is just obvious, for nothing else they can get more money even for shitty jobs, so they can have better equipments with what they could sound better or at least have a specific sound. They can tour more thus be a tighter band and it matters if you can say “fuck it, rock and roll, whatever” and be just cool.

While bands from poorer or disadvantaged countries have to prove themselves and many times these turn into struggle that sounds awful. This is the sad truth but luckily here is this magazine with amazing people behind it. I’m not behind this magazine as much as I’m sad to be in the position of the forgotten from birth but I also mostly keep my focus on bands that has born with those advantages I have listed above. So why should I blame anyone if I could be stoned too? But I also have this idea that there are things what are just that good that they are irresistible no matter where they come from.

I really believe in songs and people and whatever else their cultural outputs are in a similar way as it was in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey where there was some higher power in people’s work that united everybody and brought utopia for the whole world. I truly believe in this that one day it will happen or if not we should strive to try to get it out from ourselves even if we die at one point of the process. This way all the beaten and forgotten and misfortune will find their way to rise up.

The reason why I love this zine is because it gives opportunity to people to be able to present their lives to the world. I think even I’m a good example for that cause, believe me, most of the people who see me wouldn’t even think that I’m being published in an international magazine and been read by others from all around the world. While I’m no different from you.

And I love that the people running this magazine are people who step out from this spotlight every day. They hide behind shitty jobs and don’t rush themselves to grow up. I just heard that people think I’m wasting my time with hanging with younger folks who mostly act like junkies and with setting up shows and why I don’t wanna grow up. Well the truth is even I get depressed sometimes of thinking I will at one point realize I was wasting my time with avoiding real life and now it’s too late and all I will have is to pine over my so called hey days spent with being a teen in my twenties and thirties.

But couple days ago while leaving my bathroom I looked into the mirror and found my reflection smiling back at me. I saw a man with a smile of a kid who still loves things that are meant nothing for the rest of the world and I want to keep that smile on that specific face. And it is just so fucking sad that people in punk are thinking I’m a deadbeat because I’m still a punk. What else should I be? I still love to do punk things, be among punx and to keep my punk attitude. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t order a fucking meal at a restaurant properly or deal with adult shit. Not growing up doesn’t mean I have to stay dumb or a useless child. Being punk and living a diy life means you are providing and doing an extra, smarter job to avoid selling out your soul without a safety net under your ass. Thus maybe we don’t ride jet skis as hobby but we spend that extra money which we never earn on not giving up our conscience. On that smile that shins back to you from the mirror.

Maybe I wear the cloths I do cause I like them. Not because these are the only ones I could afford or because I don’t care about the holes and rips and torns. I just like it this way. I love my denim jacket and I love that my friend made me a Dead Moon and D-Clone patch. My pin with the back cover of the salad days 7” and my tote bag with the cover of in a car 7” which was a gift from an amazing person. This is still a fanzine run by our common and mutual love for something that is still a threat otherwise there wouldn’t be people always everyday dying to prove it’s dead or we should grow up. Fuck the haters.

***

Skateboarding

Spring had been lost, here’s the summer. Mix tapes in my brain and denim jackets are covered with pins. Bars could go fuck themselves with their stupid law of smoking is forbidden inside and you can fall asleep at island cause you won’t freeze to death. Drunk hike through hills in the morning and trying to walk on water cause it’s a river and it will take me home quicker while I only need to stand still. Moving ground. Don’t tell me jesus was better than any of us. Fuck the hippies, always anyway. Punks have two official sports but one is just for transportation. I would love to ride a bike but I’m afraid of dying too much and I have pretty bad reflexes so city biking is out for me.

Skating for fun. For me skateboarding is the only punk sport and I swear this is not a fat wreck advertisement from the ‘90s.The two things (punk and skating) are so similar for me the simple joy and basic situation of being that annoying weird outcast, that person who still hasn’t cared too much of not being awkward. Mark Gonzales says in one interview with him that sometimes people look on the fact that he still does skate as if they were asking him “are you still playing with yoyo?” They don’t know. They have no idea how is it just to cruise around and sometimes reach higher than you can and try to Ollie up a curb and actually succeed with it and feel unstoppable. How much pleasure could that be. Just to be in the streets to always do something.

Skating is like you are constantly on tour with your favorite band. That band is you, yourself. You roll through life, the air is bursting into your face and you smile like a dog. You make noise, you move, you are in the street, you are part of everything and everything is an opportunity that you can use to have fun or express yourself which is basically fucking shit up that your stupid city built to cover the stupid reality and make tourists’ life a bit less boring. Still it’s up to you to decide what to do with what. And like with punk it’s just part of everyday enjoyment. It never gets old or you don’t go bored doing it. It’s beautiful like the poetry of the body and movements and speed and danger. The constant risk of falling.
It’s full with breaking boundaries and inventions, this thing was not built so people could flip down 12 stairs but somehow people didn’t give a fuck again about what they are supposed or not supposed to do and since then it’s just the magic that’s happening. And while people are almost killing themselves to deliver their stunts even folks rotting in parking lots skating around boom boxes on acid are sharing the joy of this amazing piece of wood and iron and rubber wheels.

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punk as college

I have a business school degree. Won’t tell in which field cause it’s kinda embarrassing. I don’t wanna get fired from here but it’s almost that bad as if I were an intern for Vice. But sure the school taught me how to think like a manager. Business brain and shit. It helped me a lot. Being in bands since 16 with older guys (some were/are 10 years older than me) always meant I was the kid. In many cases I would have been the little guy patterned by my older brothers. But in reality while the other guys had their works, colleges and other shits I mostly just had free time. So I was mostly responsible to handle all the work with band stuffs. I was doing the mail orders, I was negotiating with printers, screeners, was sending out records to zines, booked shows, tours, manufactured records, while I was publishing and distributing my own zine and with the help of the college I could always realize how I could do things in a more logical, easier and better way. I’m operating things successfully without contracts just based on mutual trust, I have achieved all my dreams in my hobby which is punk. No wait, punk is my life, my love, punk love and thanks to education I could use some professionalism in doing my diy the best.

I don’t know any grammar, have speech impediment and a neurotic as much as I order pizza through internet cause I hate to phone. Still I write, I speak, I run shit and eat pizza every day. Punk is the best thing that has ever happened to me and sure it’s a hard job as well to convince people in the real world the things you have done under the ground are useful in their world as well, but just at a job interview for a multinational company many of the questions I got was about how I work in teams. Well for 10 plus years I do nothing else daily but try to be successful with other people in the things we do. Without a safety net. I have learnt from how a magazine is been published through how shirts are screened to how cut a tape into length at home and many other things too. Managing skills and shit.

What do you think people who run this magazine couldn’t be useful in a business environment? Punk is fucking nothing but problem solving and hardcore management. With the weirdest people who are sometimes the least motivated, very flakey and still we are here and everything is mostly alright. And if every idiot could do the work what punks are doing the world would be a better place.

This does not mean I wasn’t lucky. I was a bit but I had to work a lot before I could be lucky. It’s like maybe luck could lead you into circumstances you always wished to be in but when you have arrived then you’ll have to prove yourself if you don’t wanna fall out of luck. Also, never think that this hard work is just something that must be done. It’s fun when you are spending your nights and days and thoughts on your own shit cause this is what you are. Don’t be afraid to do things in the best possible way but keep in mind diy is the best possible way. Basically this all is just avoiding failing and believe me if you care you will succeed.