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.