Reading
books on reading books, knife cut noodles, proto-techno, repetitive manic rock
and roll, shows, german post-modern, the Czech crust scene, losing my edge.
I’m losing
my edge to the kids, to myself, to laziness, to being dumb or rather just feeling
dumb and above all being paralyzed by the terrifying mixture of the previously
mentioned components. I’m tired and the work hasn’t even begun. I'm not afraid of work, I’m not afraid
of failure. I have failed. It’s unpleasant but useful. A good reminder of bad
memories – Don’t be sorry, be different. I don’t even want success but to be
able to be successful, to be good at what I really like to do. That’s enough. What am I good at? That’s probably listening
and this was an intro.
Reading books on reading books is like writing columns about not writing columns, which is a very frequent topic in punk writing. If punk writing is reduced to MRR’s columnist reality. In a better world this column should be about being busy on being punk. Wait, there is no should in punk (and this is already the better world, with poorly selected words, still printed out, left right next to your toilet bowl). Generally in punk there is punk music and its fans who are the punx. Listeners. I’m a punk thus I recommend myself to write about music but I won’t because the music I listen to nowadays are non-review-able here. Proto-techno which basically is manic, repetitive rock and roll (and some that will be discussed later). System error, a person who is a fan of punk music becomes a punk and then doesn’t exclusively listens to punk rock. Theoretical question how could a punk listen to non-punk music? Is there a pause in this being? Now I thank my younger mind for getting the word (e.g.: punk) tattooed on my tight. I’m safe.
Ideas.
The core feature of punk music is similar to porn’s: you can’t define it but you know when you see it. Wittgenstein said what could be shown can’t be said and I guess laying judgement on videotaped sex depends on your vision just as much as noise is a sonic experience best lived through your hearing. Words fall on both. But playing with your zipper could satisfy each interest. Eco tried his best and said in porn time is spent as generously as it is in real life. Which means everything is boringly real until we don’t fuck. Punk music is probably when due to hearing played out sounds, finally you are not bored but feeling as if you were having some very pleasant, consensual sex. Culturally I prefer orgies. In reality: Anna, my heart is all only yours.
Sex and punk. The subject of satisfaction depends on the input of participants very similar to how this magazine’s content is formed; namely it could be anything what people make it to be.
News from the outside world: It’s a gentle act that there is shitty punk being produced because some people love crap and still they can call themselves punks which self-proclamation makes them happy. For me it’s a rational realization. I’m a punk for the same reasons as I’m a Hungarian: it just happened this way and I can’t do anything against it. For the majority my favorite bands are closer to human feces just as for the majority of Hungarians I’m a godless traitor. So be it. Punk has no rules, but damn my punk has so many. It’s not political it’s personal but to be a person among people is always political. Who, why, where, what? It’s more of a hunt for quality. Yes, there is a huge amount of punk bands who I love for their ideas and strict attitude. Mostly because they are able to transform these features into sounds and it ends up crushingly great. But it’s my taste. I have a sweet tooth for this. For what? For the terrifying groove of Missing Foundation. The artistic sadism that never falls from consciousness, so it knows what it does. It does everything. A distorted mist wrapping around everything and keeping it together in a claustrophobic space. Everything happens at the same time and it’s fun to wander around and focus always on something else. Their sound is so fundamental it’s hard to pin it to other bands. It’s heavy, slow, noisy, chanting. But not chaotic since it sounds pre-planned. Like a fucked up opera written for some fucked up reason. Sound terror, that others call industrial music? Whatever it is, it’s frightening, disgusting and really good. Without text book knowledge I see their fingerprints on many bands and without the text book knowledge it’s an interesting space where everybody is influencing each other. The whole musical and cultural scene with bands locking themselves into a sound laboratory to experience. Sonically not ideologically. Musicians play music thus they should care about rhythm and sounds. Or care about how to not care about the previous two. If they are good everything will come along. Sound experiences.I spent a great amount of time listening my way through some Pop Group records. Their echoing, distant dance records, post-punk, proto-disco, wait a minute it’s not New York, un-danceable hysteria music that is constantly arguing with itself. Parallel, inverted sounds within a band. I love to dance but I’m too comfortable to go out dancing and this sound makes me feel good because I know there is no place where people dance to this so I belong home.
Then there is the guitar sound of Henry Flynt. Deep repetition. It’s all traditional.
Does it mean I’m down with listening to punk music and you can buy my Die Kreuzen lp on Discogs? No. But I do listen to Die Kreuzen now with a different ear and I realize, pay attention and understand other aspects of their music. And by this everything gets better. New sounds are not punker than simple primitive notes of strict hardcore bands. It’s called post, proto, new wave whatever. Not better.
One final music experience from work that is too good to exclude from here. I was listening to the Peel Session of Crass and it is amazing. It doesn’t really sound just as an idea but it is actual and powerful music. Tape collages all over the session, the structure of the whole set is so hectic, the instant changes raise the idea of the missing parts were censored by the authorities. What do we want, what do we want? Disco! Also Tyvek, also the compilation La voix des gnomes. Also Pale Grey Suits from Good Throb. What a mellow atmosphere, lazy punk weekends, waking up to coffee sips, wondering through your records and fanzines. Music makes me happy.
It’s funny but by funny I ironically mean sad that ageless people are proud and willfully requesting respect for still being punk or representing the other end of this crying game and mistaking a collection of teenage-radicalism ideology with music, dividing idea from sound as if there was the capital idea and not only their own belief that match sounds and then they abandon punk for picking lint out of their belly button. That says one thing that they just give up on listening quality music. Give up to care about quality which pretty much translates to having fun. This is why nostalgia tastes so awfully bitter, because mostly it’s a re-consumption of something that is bad but once we thought it’s good. Reliving fun we are lazy to have now. But my punk is about glorifying mistakes and not stupidity, because a mistake is not what a stupid person does but something a smart person recognizes and my punk is about staying young not about dropping crocodile tears while reminiscing such hey days.
Mann said “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people”. Sometimes I think a listener is someone for whom listening is more difficult than it is for other people. Most of the times I think that I’m someone for whom it is more difficult then it is for other people. What is? That.
But I’m a listener and I’m a good listener so I know that you have to work for listening and suffer through shitty bands, times when everything seems boring, when you can’t find what you really wish to hear, when you feel there is not enough time to hear everything that is great and recently have fallen into your lap. You have to be hungry but in this case to be hungry could be fun. Because it’s not about starving it’s about the desire for consuming eternal culture. I’m fat and okay with it but I’m terribly unlettered and that is not such a sexy feeling when you face it. I blame myself for the delusion of once I was full. Books not midnight food.
Don’t fall for fake listeners. The ones who slackishly state there are only two types of music, good and bad. That means they have to decide what is good and what is bad, they have to make universal decisions and it leads to objectify their lives by objectifying everything else around them. It’s the fear of everything. Overproduced bro-core means nothing to me but probably that genre has its top performers since it has it’s own habits, rituals, ideas which could be eminently performed or reconstructed and reinvented. I let it be but I won’t be around it. While in another universe Firmeza 10 is a perfect hardcore band. This other universe is the space between my two ears, You can obey objectivity by sacrificing your subjectivity but at the same time you can’t hope for pizza when you go into a Korean place.
Reading books on reading books is like writing columns about not writing columns, which is a very frequent topic in punk writing. If punk writing is reduced to MRR’s columnist reality. In a better world this column should be about being busy on being punk. Wait, there is no should in punk (and this is already the better world, with poorly selected words, still printed out, left right next to your toilet bowl). Generally in punk there is punk music and its fans who are the punx. Listeners. I’m a punk thus I recommend myself to write about music but I won’t because the music I listen to nowadays are non-review-able here. Proto-techno which basically is manic, repetitive rock and roll (and some that will be discussed later). System error, a person who is a fan of punk music becomes a punk and then doesn’t exclusively listens to punk rock. Theoretical question how could a punk listen to non-punk music? Is there a pause in this being? Now I thank my younger mind for getting the word (e.g.: punk) tattooed on my tight. I’m safe.
Ideas.
The core feature of punk music is similar to porn’s: you can’t define it but you know when you see it. Wittgenstein said what could be shown can’t be said and I guess laying judgement on videotaped sex depends on your vision just as much as noise is a sonic experience best lived through your hearing. Words fall on both. But playing with your zipper could satisfy each interest. Eco tried his best and said in porn time is spent as generously as it is in real life. Which means everything is boringly real until we don’t fuck. Punk music is probably when due to hearing played out sounds, finally you are not bored but feeling as if you were having some very pleasant, consensual sex. Culturally I prefer orgies. In reality: Anna, my heart is all only yours.
Sex and punk. The subject of satisfaction depends on the input of participants very similar to how this magazine’s content is formed; namely it could be anything what people make it to be.
News from the outside world: It’s a gentle act that there is shitty punk being produced because some people love crap and still they can call themselves punks which self-proclamation makes them happy. For me it’s a rational realization. I’m a punk for the same reasons as I’m a Hungarian: it just happened this way and I can’t do anything against it. For the majority my favorite bands are closer to human feces just as for the majority of Hungarians I’m a godless traitor. So be it. Punk has no rules, but damn my punk has so many. It’s not political it’s personal but to be a person among people is always political. Who, why, where, what? It’s more of a hunt for quality. Yes, there is a huge amount of punk bands who I love for their ideas and strict attitude. Mostly because they are able to transform these features into sounds and it ends up crushingly great. But it’s my taste. I have a sweet tooth for this. For what? For the terrifying groove of Missing Foundation. The artistic sadism that never falls from consciousness, so it knows what it does. It does everything. A distorted mist wrapping around everything and keeping it together in a claustrophobic space. Everything happens at the same time and it’s fun to wander around and focus always on something else. Their sound is so fundamental it’s hard to pin it to other bands. It’s heavy, slow, noisy, chanting. But not chaotic since it sounds pre-planned. Like a fucked up opera written for some fucked up reason. Sound terror, that others call industrial music? Whatever it is, it’s frightening, disgusting and really good. Without text book knowledge I see their fingerprints on many bands and without the text book knowledge it’s an interesting space where everybody is influencing each other. The whole musical and cultural scene with bands locking themselves into a sound laboratory to experience. Sonically not ideologically. Musicians play music thus they should care about rhythm and sounds. Or care about how to not care about the previous two. If they are good everything will come along. Sound experiences.I spent a great amount of time listening my way through some Pop Group records. Their echoing, distant dance records, post-punk, proto-disco, wait a minute it’s not New York, un-danceable hysteria music that is constantly arguing with itself. Parallel, inverted sounds within a band. I love to dance but I’m too comfortable to go out dancing and this sound makes me feel good because I know there is no place where people dance to this so I belong home.
Then there is the guitar sound of Henry Flynt. Deep repetition. It’s all traditional.
Does it mean I’m down with listening to punk music and you can buy my Die Kreuzen lp on Discogs? No. But I do listen to Die Kreuzen now with a different ear and I realize, pay attention and understand other aspects of their music. And by this everything gets better. New sounds are not punker than simple primitive notes of strict hardcore bands. It’s called post, proto, new wave whatever. Not better.
One final music experience from work that is too good to exclude from here. I was listening to the Peel Session of Crass and it is amazing. It doesn’t really sound just as an idea but it is actual and powerful music. Tape collages all over the session, the structure of the whole set is so hectic, the instant changes raise the idea of the missing parts were censored by the authorities. What do we want, what do we want? Disco! Also Tyvek, also the compilation La voix des gnomes. Also Pale Grey Suits from Good Throb. What a mellow atmosphere, lazy punk weekends, waking up to coffee sips, wondering through your records and fanzines. Music makes me happy.
It’s funny but by funny I ironically mean sad that ageless people are proud and willfully requesting respect for still being punk or representing the other end of this crying game and mistaking a collection of teenage-radicalism ideology with music, dividing idea from sound as if there was the capital idea and not only their own belief that match sounds and then they abandon punk for picking lint out of their belly button. That says one thing that they just give up on listening quality music. Give up to care about quality which pretty much translates to having fun. This is why nostalgia tastes so awfully bitter, because mostly it’s a re-consumption of something that is bad but once we thought it’s good. Reliving fun we are lazy to have now. But my punk is about glorifying mistakes and not stupidity, because a mistake is not what a stupid person does but something a smart person recognizes and my punk is about staying young not about dropping crocodile tears while reminiscing such hey days.
Mann said “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people”. Sometimes I think a listener is someone for whom listening is more difficult than it is for other people. Most of the times I think that I’m someone for whom it is more difficult then it is for other people. What is? That.
But I’m a listener and I’m a good listener so I know that you have to work for listening and suffer through shitty bands, times when everything seems boring, when you can’t find what you really wish to hear, when you feel there is not enough time to hear everything that is great and recently have fallen into your lap. You have to be hungry but in this case to be hungry could be fun. Because it’s not about starving it’s about the desire for consuming eternal culture. I’m fat and okay with it but I’m terribly unlettered and that is not such a sexy feeling when you face it. I blame myself for the delusion of once I was full. Books not midnight food.
Don’t fall for fake listeners. The ones who slackishly state there are only two types of music, good and bad. That means they have to decide what is good and what is bad, they have to make universal decisions and it leads to objectify their lives by objectifying everything else around them. It’s the fear of everything. Overproduced bro-core means nothing to me but probably that genre has its top performers since it has it’s own habits, rituals, ideas which could be eminently performed or reconstructed and reinvented. I let it be but I won’t be around it. While in another universe Firmeza 10 is a perfect hardcore band. This other universe is the space between my two ears, You can obey objectivity by sacrificing your subjectivity but at the same time you can’t hope for pizza when you go into a Korean place.
Is it a
title to be a listener? It’s a great hobby and nothing else. Not a prestige,
not anything but time being spent with standing next to music. Still I’m losing
my edge and crying like a baby when others borrow my beloved micro-subculture’s
essence to prove their relevance. They wear it, not live it. But to live
listening is a bizarre act and probably not something that should be
impeachable on anyone. Although I live among people and it feels like shit when
someone reduce my obsession into a replication of a look or act. It’s childish
but I’m desperate because I’m losing my edge.
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