#385

If punk is dead now then when did it live? When did it has its hey days when everything that it was destined to fulfill was a living reality? When Malcom Mclaren was selling ugly cloths in Chelsea or when the Ramones wrote rock and roll songs about sniffing glue and horror movies? When Crass was walking around naked in a squatted garden using anarchy as an excuse not to do the dishes? When Tampax and Hitler SS played under a bridge on cartoon instruments and decided that they rather just hang at home? When Spions (the Hungarian Electric Eels) wrote songs in English because the communist regime was too stupid to understand foreign languages? Or when Los Saicos started playing mutant surf rock in Peru before anyone? When did it reach the wall from where everything started to sound not only boring but as much a redundant reproduction of the sound in question that it felt useless to play and probably listen to ever again? Already with Outsiders? Nasal Boys? Johnny Moped or what? Was it Less Than Jake? Nah, they are too cool. Sup, all my friends who are metal heads? Hardcore died when good bands started playing dad rock and everyone forgot to notice and keep in mind the Crucifucks, Deep Wound, Spike In Vain, United Mutation, Die Kreuzen, Outpatients, Really Red rather they realized baggy pants are more comfy and you can listen and play metal even with short hair. Everything else still lives, that Guns and Roses cover band just played for a packed house and the up rise of the western civilization part II is right at the corner.

Have you realized that people who tend to bury culture are always live in a plastic bag located hundred feet deep under the ground? If you can’t find something you really looking for then that could mean you are still not looking hard enough or at the right exact place. It also could mean that you have invented something that is waiting for you to actually create it or you expect things that never existed and you live with false definitions in your head. I hated it when everyone called everything punk. Fucking freakish, trashy drum and bass was called punk because it was loud and fast and noisy and was easier to listen to it under the influence of drugs and booze. But no, punk is a word used for punk things. It doesn’t define just anything that is vaguely awesome or the truest shit. It defines many things but not everything that is great. So stop calling jazz, British invasion, kraut rock, garage, surf, rock and roll, psych, metal bands punk and start calling yourself either illiterate or a punk who listens to other music. Don’t be an Eskimo standing in a desert wondering, how weird the snow is here.

I would puke those in the face who say fun begins outside your comfort zone because I really hate everything all the time when I’m not in my bed, eating pizza, listening to The Fall and receiving a back rub. Being lazy and boring is no comfort. To learn and while doing that also have fun takes time and work for sure but if you are not doing it inside your comfort zone why the fuck do you do it anyway? Ha?!

I deleted everything from my mp3 player because I felt awful wasting my time with listening to the three same albums when I have two hundred other records on my player’s memory beside them. Most of them I have now on actual record that stands on my shelf and I decided to divide my music listening into three different environments. At home, at work and while travelling. At home I spin my records. I tend to pile them up at the beginning of the weekend and listen my way through them. Also because I have my laptop and wifi at home that’s where I search for new music. At work I like to listen to long albums that not just take more time to hear but the whole record blends into a structure of songs not only one tune after another. While travelling I used to reach for my feel good acts but life is not a movie since we take films more serious than actual reality, thus I abandoned the concept of me listening to soundtrack-esque hits which is mostly MF Doom, for an eastern European white guy in dad cloths. I want to discover bands even while I sneak around the streets of Budapest so my rule was not putting anything on my mp3 player that is too easy to listen to. And now I have 200 albums that have the same chance to be digitally spanned by me. And I love it because this is my comfort zone that now has been expanded to the streets too where I listen to new music or already known ones with a different set of mind. This is music I have to work for a little bit, that needs my attention, music I don’t already know even when I don’t listen to it. Just today I went out to buy Club Mate and cherry juice while listening to Barcelona’s Extremo Nihilismo En Barcelona, Confuse’ Stupid Life and H.H.H.’s Intellectual Punks and Contrazione ‘s Cineocchio! Storia E Memoria. It was also such a joyful trip when I was taking a bus a bit tipsy and blasted Räjäyttäjät’s Rock 'n' Roll Painajainen or some other time when I was nerding out on Warum Joe’s Toccare La Verita. Is that fuckwave?
So if a comfort zone is where you can be lazy and boring then I want to exist outside of that but if it means where you have fun on your own rules than fuck society and the outside world and I want to eat my mind pizza in MY NEW HOUSE, MY NEW HOUSE.

Probably what always calms down the tension to a boring state of calling the scene where you consume culture a comfort zone is the rise of mediocrity among its doers, which I have nothing against. That’s great when almost everything is at least average and not either super amazing or really bad. In punk only two things are bad. When people try to play shitty music in a shitty way or when they play shitty music in a really good way. But going out to a show seeing a band perform a solid set that you forgot while travelling home and listening to Flipper is not a bad night at all.

Nowadays sometimes it also feels like everybody is doing everything so the focus is switched from those who produce to those who are judging the creative out-puts. Truth being said I had more sex over my fanzines than I did for my bands. While I write as a lazy and stupid school paper press gang goof but dance on stage as Prince on acid.

But it’s terrible right? This world is obscene when people whose work I adore write me e-mails that they liked what and how I have written about them. It should be the other way around.
I reached a point during the write up for the YETT where I realized since everything is so instant nowadays bands are forming to play a genre that is on the spotlight rather than just stepping out from the shadow into the spotlight that is focused on their style of sound. These bands lack the main motivation what is the real reason of why I really love to listen to music: Hearing people play whatever they think is cool. But these protocol bands are playing what is in other people’s favor which even if executed in a real decent way is super dumb because these bands couldn’t exists without anyone’s attention and this is why I skip them because I don’t have to hear it to know what they play. It’s not only dark, gothic post-punk/death rock that I always kick around in my column along with oi influenced hardcore but generic KDB hardcore punk and well bed room noise hardcore too drowning me with their uncountable amount of demos, eps, break ups and last shows. I accept it, these are sub-genres with their own rules that might differ from mine. The music is only bad when the listener is bad.
I like it better when there is more to discover than what I hear for the first time or when there is nothing else but that indescribable quality, luck, charm of music writing that creates awkward feelings that make you hostile so you give in to fall into Stockholm Syndrome and embrace the sounds. Interesting music not only could mean chaos as no idea noise but also exact separable parts organized in a way that is shocking. I want ideas. Not intelligence but people with a will that reeks from unstoppable innocence. The more fucked up their ideas are the more interesting to music will be for me. Let it be Buck Biloxi and the Fucks, Deformity or the new Rákosi recordings. I need to hear that force which made the music happen. I love how under certain circumstances guitars can end up as an inconceivable buzz that leaves space for imagination not only for what the player’s intention was with using such mutual code to transmit information but I feel welcomed to guess after all what the fuck is happening.

It doesn’t mean I only listen to the most unique bands who live outside the box. If I were in a band whose sound I couldn’t describe in any way maybe I would succeed as a musician who I don’t want to be and fail as a listener and by this my music would be just shit. Because after all I want to make music I want to hear and selfishly it would be great if other people would think the same and produce more music I want to hear.