shameless self-promotion

while the delay is still on here's a zine i have collaborated in with a friend of mine who drew pictures for my words. to not be the person who tells you how great it is here are some words about the booklet (from a friend of ours):

http://heart-a-tact.blogspot.hu/2012/10/fanzine-1-neon-skinheads-in-electric.html

also a brief review:

dude, some disturbing stuff in this zine

and profound stuff

and some disturbingly profound stuff

and some disturbing AND profound stuff


check out this band too. glue addicted space punk - http://pisscrystals.bandcamp.com/album/harn-chemikalien-wunderbare-gedichten-1

delay

so because you people are not buying enough copies of MRR i was asked to put a delay on posting my columns. Thus they still will be here but not as freshly as they were. Start buying the zine or wait one month.

# 353 Summertime Gloom

"at first you will fail then you will recognise
the mistake was in giving what you never could own
you might be young now and you might be alone
you might have one thing that you do well
and people will tell you the world it looks this way
but they're all the same they're just useless waiting here"

Hopefully this will be my last column ever… written from my old room. I lived in this flat for 20 years. I changed to another room when my brother moved out right on my 18^th birthday after a minutes-long date with a girl I had the biggest crush on. She kissed me in the middle of town. We met, made out, she handed me a letter saying Happy Birthday, kissed my forehead as a farewell, then left. I went home and felt like even if I hate this room now life is kind of alright. It is. Or was. And maybe it still will be.

I hated this flat at first, then not only accepted it but also began to love it. This was the room where I was. Where I was myself. Where I did everything. Came up with bands, lyrics, songs, zines, tours, shows, columns, mails. Made out, loved, cried after break ups, made hour-long calls. Here slept a few dozen friends and many bands, and that was the place where I had a breakfast with Al Burian and a cute techno band while we were listening to CRISCO THUNDER, eating bruschetta.

This is where I learned about the whole world, but also where I brought the whole world and this is where it opened up for me — where I could always return and it would make me feel better even if I never left. We all are born into a wrong place if we care too much about our whereabouts. But after all we just live in rooms and that’s all we ever change. If you feel stuck it’s you and not that place where you are. You can’t escape planet earth.

Now my records are boxed up and so are my books. All of my clothes are washed and ready to be put into several plastic bags. I feel like I will miss my mother though cause she was a great person to me. And I would be so glad if I could tell her—and she could understand—what kind of things I did and in which things was she my silent partner, always trusting and supporting me and setting me free to do whatever was my thing—except when I came home with a bloody face or puked next to my bed. To tell her also how I achieved almost everything I ever wanted and now I’m just striving to maintain these without selling my soul. But one of the reasons because I had to leave was just that I could no longer hide some my feelings from my parents I just didn’t want them to see me like this, because I wanted to hide myself and also find myself in better shape. 

The thing is I’m so far from feeling alright. There’s nothing glorious, spiritual or meaningful in depression. It just makes you sad, tired, and weighed down, so if you can, you’d better avoid it. I don’t even know if I’m depressed cause I still take baths before going out and I still eat food to be alive, although both activities seem more pointless day by day. But for some reason I like to smell my own skin cause it calms me down. Even at a show two friends of mine started sniffing me once and I laughed… so baths might save me, and I want to be saved so I have to carry on.

Yesterday on my way home from a show I blast my headphones to the In A Car EP from the MEAT PUPPETS. And it felt good. Fuck it, I gave in: I need a tote bag but will only wear one if there’s one with the design of this EP’s cover. Music might save me. Listening to music already did—finding myself all swept up in it and just the pure liking of punk music.

Sometimes I wonder how much it matters if you know the person whose whining you have to listen to. I try to believe there is a way everything sounds interesting. I mean, I could love songs that are about things that really don’t matter that much to me, but still every time they make me feel that this is the only thing that exists. I even have stupid tattoos from songs which I have no idea what their lines mean.

I’m telling you this because I was wondering about it as I jam my friends’ solo album, which is another one of the things that is also saving me at the moment. It’s great and sometimes when I’m really drunk I start to sneeze to it due to trying to keep a balance between a total breakdown in tears or being happy that I’m not alone, even with my problems and my instant loneliness rushes. But this solo record is just too true. When you realize it’s everything and everyone and so it goes. Sometimes there are just words what would be meaningless out of context but knowing the person and their background they are just even better for me, while maybe for others it’s still nothing. But in reality it’s everything. And I would feel dissed if I had missed this album.

This is how for some people everything I do is just stupid rambling, but for others it’s hopefully something more. When I started writing for MRR and I sent out the columns to my friends here they responded to me saying how cool it was that everything I wrote about is something we had already discussed, or how cool it was that I secretly referred to them. Maybe being an outsider made me endorse insider things, but in the end we are all just humans making and telling our stories. It’s all about desires, requires and communication.

Yesterday when I left my old room with the last round of stuff, while waiting at the bus stop I almost cried. I just didn’t know what I felt or what I should have done with these vague emotions. Heading to our new flat I ran into my new flatmate who asked me what was wrong. I felt beaten. He said I looked sad. And I just got amazed how much this person knows me while I tried to hide all my feelings. I failed in communication, but he succeeded in being a friend. I’m scared and heartbroken not just moving and leaving the old family nest. I’m afraid nothing will change because this is just how I am.

But I also recall something someone told me once: there is nothing I can’t do. And it’s true for all of us. So I recall many things, and I realize this more. It’s funny how most of the times I feel fucked up, people from different parts of my life without knowing anything about my condition just find me to cheer me up. Getting e-mails, and nice words. Or recalling the moment when Mariam ran her hands over my cheek and told me I have an interesting brain. Or Francesca home taping me the second SON SKULL LP in seconds after I blamed the internet for not leaking the album, and mailing it to me from the other part of the world. Or having paranoid dreams and skull fuck thoughts for a whole night, then waking up and receiving an email from Perennial telling me they wanna send me records to review. Or my friends just being my friends. My favorite secret terrorist editing this every month.

For a reason this time I’m noticing everyone around me, and thus feeling guilt for not always being the person they liked. Like not answering those lovely mails and just being flakey. Not finishing overdue things. Losing contact with people who I would really love to talk to, sometimes they’re even just staring right in front of me. And sometimes I fall for these weakened moments thinking there might be some glory in sorrow and pining. But there isn’t. There’s glory in sitting in front of a bar and talking with a person I shared bands with for 8 years about doing yoga now and being punk forever. That Greek smile and Szeged hug. Everybody everywhere. Band members, collaborators, partners in crime. people I swam with once. Always just too many who just as well as me sometimes go home and feel alone, but somehow they know this is not the end of the world, even if it is 2012.

It has to be working on something that will always make me feel better. I always got together with girls and otherwise felt great when I did something. When I was putting sweat on something I liked and was proud of. It gave me self-esteem and I was just a healthy person. Cause who likes someone who is just wondering around in his self-generated tragedy? What scares me is sometimes I know I’m not a terrible loser but still I feel low and I don’t know why. It just hits me and there is weight on my chest and confusion behind my eyes in my skull. I can feel my thoughts and fears in my body and it scares me.           

For such a long time I lived my life in a bubble. I liked to call it punk but I was just a messed up kid in love with punk. I didn’t care about people other than my bandmates and a handful of friends, mostly outsiders of the scene. But this doesn’t mean that now I love everyone, it means that back then I wasn’t even talking to anyone else other than just six people in the whole world. Although I never thought that I’m better than anyone else I just didn’t care about the rest. They say if you like something do it with full heart and then someone will find you. I have found myself. And I got lonely only when I finished these things. I wanted people to find me, but now I blame myself for being too blind to not see how many of them did. Thus while pining in the dark and thinking hard on what went wrong I should just think about what is still right and make efforts to turn everything around for the better. I never was lucky, I just didn’t give a fuck about failing cause you know. Ever try, ever fail, try again, fail again, fail better.   

Thank whatever for Michael Gira and fuck the haters!

# 352

Sickoids you are living all over me. I saw you twice and thought it’s great. I even did some john-cleese-losing-his-shit type of dance moves in a pit during your set to receive a beer shower. But fuck, how could you write such a record? Alright it’s obvious. In my head. That it’s Mecht Mensch with Hüsker Dü. But fuck this is just brilliant. Total sonic destruction happening while the sounds are doing a lovely waltz on a distortion landmine field. So good. Desperately beautiful and uncontrollably angry. The rhythm and all those harsh melodies. Manic and unstoppable restlessness which actually sounds sweet. Like consumer music if you are selling counter living. Should have grabbed an lp and wear a pin as an insignia of loving awesome music. Those all of a sudden guitar slayings which are totally out of place but still perfectly fitting to the mindset of confused people embracing their inner fire to be against this world what doesn’t make anything easy for us in ways of living here.
But we have records at least. I already mentioned Hüsker Dü and Mecht Mensch. And nowadays there are only few things what are better than reading after midnight and listening to my husker dü lps on my headphones in my bed, tired and lonely but still in a volume that is replacing some kind of stimulant. Beautiful collages of broken hearts, broken amps and amphetamine. Knowing that I deserve more and waiting for someone to enter my world. There are so many things out there and maybe I will discover a few with my headphones on, wondering around all alone. Sonic blown out perfectness like if beach boys were a cult’s house band for angry people with big hearts. Sunset music for those who don’t believe in the sun.
You don’t really sense it, cause I don’t write like a fat person but I have a big belly and a swollen face and I move slow and I like eating. And what is weird about eating is I guess most of us taste food in a different way. Not every food, but our tongues are different that’s why making out is fun or just interesting. But I think we hear things different as well so It’s not a big surprise that we interact with our ears in a romantic way as well.
And for me music is sometimes so close to food. It is made by people for people, like ethnic food, which is best when prepared by natives. Like punk, who doesn’t feel it can’t make it just reproduce it. It’s totally up to your taste and most of the times the more you chew the more you can discover. I had such relevant revelations when I was listening to the second blitz lp eating some sandwiches and there was one song where the guitars were just so aggressively beautiful and so distant from everything else while they fit perfectly to the whole song.
Forgot which song was it and maybe I will never find again that feeling but I guess that’s the point in finding a feeling in specific times of the nights and remember it for a long time when it was only me and a sound from decades ago. That moment made me realize there is always more layers in music. I mean, I already knew that but that’s good as well in punk as in being a fan that you feel like you are a baby. Sometimes bands sound like I hear them for the first time, or I just hear music for the first time. The music that finally fits me.
And what I like the most is my head being a mixtape and bands’ complete albums are the tracks on it. During the beginning of summer I love to listen to super wild horses, brilliant colors, Grass Widow and the new Broken Water lp. With all those dreamy guitars and voices from a secret cooler world. I always wondered about listening to these bands while riding my bike but I live on a hill and I’m fat (as I already told you) so I rather spare myself from the torturous biking part. These bands are like cruising with skateboards in a gang or just with another person you will might kiss if you fall together.
I remember when Grass Widow played here I was telling the bassist and their roadie that I’m incapable of listening to the Nerves cause those songs are so viciously true they make me cry and be angry on people who don’t love me. Gosh I want to listen to Nerves again but as I said, I can’t. The new Grass Widow record is so beautiful. I can imagine that when all the people who go to operas in fancy clothes will die out and those theatre buildings will be deserted we will go to there and occupy them  and listen to such beautiful music as internal logic with grey hairs and bended backs wearing band t-shirts, balancing by canes. Not to say this is music for the older and pretentiously sophisticated pack but it’s an another levels of perfect harmonies. Yes, it still is underground music, played by people with tattoos and sunglasses for people who wear  junk food-stained shorts even at opera houses.
Brilliant Colors is just so cool. Since I’m back at home and waiting for the sun to warm up the nearest lake I listen to brilliant colors and imagine myself back on the beach of the Pacific Ocean walking barefoot among rotting crabs in excruciatingly cold salty water, wearing my trench coat and mumbling Morrissey songs in my head. They make me spend my weekends with things that are of meaning . Like making flyers for upcoming shows, or just try to be collaborative with amazing people. So raw, thus viscerally cool and fresh like they play these songs for the first time and they work instantly. As good as novels which feel to be written in one night. There is some kind of melancholia in Brilliant Colors which always makes them sound they just don’t give that much fuck about feeling crap. They have instruments, the ocean and themselves to have fun. I wish I had seen them.
All these bands are as beautiful as the weeping guitar sounds of Born Against’s Shroud and Universal Order of Armageddon’s Mud. Two bands’ two brilliant songs I’m constantly jamming these days while exploring my inner thoughts while wondering through this dirty city where I live. One of such inner thoughts I dug up is we just have to listen to guitars a bit more. Or to all the instruments. To find something perfect. Sounds what are telling us something.
Few weeks ago i went to a no-idea-what-genre show but it was supposed to be connected to punk in an alright-why-not-to way. and they really could play their guitars but that was the only thing that they were telling me. Their talent and technical skills. I felt worse than I did during the two years of government of our dictatorial ruling party. It was this terrible and nonsense pointless musician jerking off.
For me, music is about putting yourself rather than your skills into your chords. This way it matters who you are not what are you capable of. Guess what, everybody is capable of anything.
Like with this new Broken Water lp it’s obviously a weeded out Sonic Youth fandom. But there's also something much more as well. They sound more like people who grow up smoking pot and listening to early Sonic Youth than a band who wants to make it with slacking. These people are like us and we don’t want to make it. We just need music to represent the goodness in moments.
Broken water is what I feel when I stroll around on empty beaches after mowing the lawn at my parent’s weekend house, drinking warmed up beer and watching the wind surfers eating shit. I feel that my job sucks, I don’t really make any money but right now I’m supposed to be happy and relaxed because I'm here on the beach. But the beach is empty because everybody is at work and that makes me feel that my life sucks even more. They are adults and I’m just a dude balancing on a fucked up curb like a free kid. I know I shouldn’t be like that but what will happen if I stay to be that for a little bit more? This is how broken water sounds to me. It feels like there is something they are holding back, pace changings and heaviness. Like having fun while you should be serious. Staying in your bed and let your smile solve all your problems.
Back to the beginning Mecht Mensch is perfect. They are not just a band who you know that have influenced others but their music would stand out even nowadays. Without the context of time just in context of forever punk. They are just a band that is good because they are good. And I never really listen to bands because they are cool but not good. However, I play sudor sometimes with the image in my head of a show I’ve been once at and it was an amazing punk night and one of the guitar players was wearing a sudor shirt and it was just an irresistibly good look. Memories and fashion.
Anyways, mecht mensch is just a crazy good crazy hardcore band. With smart kids fucking being aware of their shit. Amazing. For some subconscious reasons I bumped into their acceptance ep. I already heard their split with Tar Babies but that time I didn’t pay that much attention as it would have deserved. But here it is again to save my hours spent in contempt. No rest, no relief, still it’s so much better than reality. It’s just another proof of how common anger relaxes us and makes us feel better about ourselves. The more they hate the more we love. Wire walking balance of guitars that could fall anytime but these guys know better than anyone that they won’t. Seems that they even risk some crazy voyages into sonic craziness but there is always that organized, well targeted hatred which keeps them in the safety of being righteously fucked up. So good. The whole music is a huge blast with the hectic drums and massive teen angst.
I have to listen to commercial radio at my workplace. I guess it's weird that most of the songs the radio is playing are supposed to be songs for having fun but almost all of them have a huge depressive, melancholic hint which makes me suppose that these hits will push people into the blue unconsciously. I know that ordinary people are happy to hear such tunes but it would make me depressed if that would be my only option. I bet it works vice versa but I like to cherish the idea that even bands like Mecht Mensch or Outpanties could be big hits for us, who make us party or feel more alive and connected.
Also, regular people think that they are alright so why do they want anything more from a songs than to break the silence? By demanding more from these songs they would admit that nothing is alright and even these sad songs make them feel a bit better. We know that everything is shit but their “everything” is nothing for us.
As always, it will become a bit better because we are making it better. We are embracing the beauty in tragedies and nonsense and creating something out of them that is just the best thing. To cut ourselves out from the shit. So make your noise in any forms girls and boys.


ps.: i wanna finish my long overdue fanzine which will be in english and also there will be an artsy-fartsy zine in english as well for which i provided sentences and one of my best friends did sick drawings. but if you are interested in my previous zine just hit me up and we will figure it out. Also, send me cool shit, because I’m as poor as I have to share a room with a 18 year old kid.

women's appreciation

I was in San Francisco couple months back. And I met some of the people running this zine. And all you should know is: They are teenagers. They are full with energy, enthusiasm, knowledge, curiosity and punk, and want to learn about the whole world if it’s connected to angry but cool youth, about our world we have created for ourselves. They’re not gonna grow out of anything. ‘Cause there’s nothing to grow out of and nowhere to grow up unless you wanna be a boring asshole among shallow people.

That’s why I also really wish the best to Laura Jane Grace from Against Me! because she grew up and no longer dreaming means she has to be a resident of this cruel shithole called the real world. And while I wouldn’t wish this badly vibing internet ignorance to anyone, the irony is entertaining me that the stadiums Against Me! have molded their music and ideas to are now big enough to fill with all those xenophobic assholes who are way beyond freaked out about her coming out. Not to go too unnecessarily further with my rant: Against Me! should keeping fucking themselves for whatever they are as a band as a message. Although I still love you Julie. But it’s really not her who I wanna talk about.  

What was weird about the coverage of this was it sounded like as if now since there is a woman in the band in charge of being the so-called brain behind songwriting, then everything is in DANGER! Not just the sound of their upcoming songs but even their whole existence as well. People are worried of the future of the band? Like if they changed anyhow that would be the first time in the history of music a band starts to suck because some of the members’ personal life has an affect on the band’s music? Most of my previous columns are about awesome bands’ terrible records. Read those and learn about reality. Have you heard people complaining on how HR’s drug addiction turned Bad Brains into complete crap? OK, well maybe… But reading about how people are worried that Against Me! will start to suck? They already changed from heartfelt-squatter-folk-in-the-core-of-a-punk-band to a shitty crap-MTV-stardom-cloroxed-living-room-rock. The last record I have heard from them sounded like punks who wanna play Franz Ferdinand.

But why would she stop playing music the same music she was playing before? Because women don’t play music? Because women don’t play punk music? Also why are her fans are upset and confused? I mean it’s a huge thing in a person’s life—and her friends’ and family’s life—to make such decisions. But she is doing it for her own happiness and last time I checked Against Me! did not really sounded like the Mentors thus I don’t really get how her being fully herself would change any of her band’s sounds or ideas. Or is it different to hear those ideas from a woman than from a man? But especially when those ideas could come from anyone and they are that watered down and shitty to begin with. My mom always tells me I should wake up from my teenage dream and if I told her I have anarchistic views on living in this world she would tell me it’s a lie, but I wouldn’t somehow believe it more if it came from my father.

But this whole fuss really made me think in a big way—about women, about women in music and especially women in the punk scene. I have seen a friend of mine playing the guitar with his penis, but besides the fact that it looked freaky it didn’t really help his playing or make him look too cool either. So why are we so anchored to the need of penises between the legs of our idolized noisemakers?  That day this news on LJG got revealed I went to see some friends’ band practice. Incidentally, they are all women. They are together for like half a year and they play this Minor Threat-esque but collapsing plain punk hardcore. What I love in the first Minor Threat album is that it’s so visceral and natural and confused and sometimes falling apart but still a fucking powerhouse, they can’t go wrong. The guitar is playing thoughts of angry youth like hating school and jobs and cops rather than notes or bridges and choruses. And they— the girls I went to check—were awesome but weird as well.

Look, I’m as ignorant as Agnostic Front’s United Blood (not if they have gained any more intellectual ever since) so maybe I shouldn’t really start scratching the surface of why are girls especially in countries like mine are forced to be this way even in punk.

But when I was in SF almost every band that I saw had at least female member and Replica ripped my fucking head off without asking anyone’s permission or looking around to see who they should care about. Seriously, at an Oakland show I was moshed into a kitchen from a pit the girls had started. And these girls at home could have done the same to me. But they were for some reason concerned (in a different way from the guys who do the same thing) about what people will think about them, even among the safety walls of their rehearsal room. They wanted to play their songs good rather than just play good overall. But I mean punk is about mistakes so if you make one just keep on playing cause you are doing something right.

For some reasons (which might be more to do with writing this at work and being on my third beer and no food at all) being there and seeing them play, it was almost like they were playing punk for the first time. Or at least I felt it that way sitting on the cold floor being half drunk, suffocated on deodorant sprays and windowless room heat. They tried to figure out what will sound how and because they are girls it seemed like they felt like they had to reinvent punk for themselves from the basics. And although I loved this idea, I also wanted them to be natural. They were intimidated by me and I guess it’s normal since I’m a critical, cynical huge fucking asshole, especially when they see me hugging my beer, but I just wanted them to fucking hate me, to make me the reason why they are shy and then stab that shyness in the fucking throat with their raging songs. I wanted them—and more so their music—to frighten me. They asked me to check them out for my opinion on them, but what they should know—and it’s already fucked up I’m saying this—that they don’t need a man to tell them what they should do or care what the fuck I think about them. ‘Cause I didn’t go to their practice as a talent agent. I went there to be amazed by their rage—that I don’t put out, we don’t give a fuck, subvert normality, disco sucks rage. Of running away not from home but from society and all it’s bullshit. It’s not some huge, “let’s all rise, unite and take over” speech. I’m not Bill Pullman at the end of Independence Day. But everybody who is punk and likes to be punk, they should act like Randy Quaid did while flying his jet into the eyes of the enemy, laughing, spitting and not being bothered to die. In punk only those fail on stage who are not willing to die for themselves.

This rehearsal also reminded me that I love compilations. I love them for the same reason I love punk. There are million bands after each other ripping so hard I’m being amazed by our whole counter culture. One of the most inspiring comps of all time for me is the Bullshit Detector ones. ‘Cause they not only summon a time and scene but they also summon what is so good in punk. No matter how fucked up you play, if you are smart and have the will you will succeed. It’s the punk plus that makes everything so good and those three comps with their many dozen bands are almost all great, even if some of them can’t play their instruments at all, it’s that rage which could be naive as hell but still could fill up kids hearts with adrenaline and courage to start making their own shit and recognize others’ bullshit.

Because for me women are mysteriously amazing as well as anarcho punx, thus for me this whole crass movement is a feminine one too. While I love hanging out with weirdly masculine people, especially when they are women or kinda stupid boys, I’m really psyched for my new band. We even will have a skinhead member who is a self-proclaimed emo skin. So every member except me has a feminine soul especially the girl who will play bass. And I’m really excited to experience creating something new with this set of people and minds. Not that we will be “The Feminine Band That The Scene Needs” or anything, but I’m really excited to play with these new people and excited about our bass player as well ‘cause even though she played the harp for six years it will be her first time to be in a punk band and play the bass. And a friend of mine was right that he always wants someone in his bands to be an absolute beginner on her or his instrument ‘cause people who just started playing music care about what they like to hear and being creative not just playing out from knowledge and being aware of which riff is completely in tune.

What we are great at most is this just this. Punk is a community that cares about the people behind the music—their stories, their ideas. and whatever it is since it’s punk and cool and sounds true and sincere everybody can be themselves and do their own thing. The only thing you have to be is yourself. Even Against Me! dared to be so awful, so that now playing music as a girl or just dare to be a girl is such a punk move for anyone. And no one should be afraid to do these things cause to be a real punk it not only means to act like one but realize the punkness in others as well. Because if we can’t see how awesome people are when they are fully themselves and having fun, then they will be afraid to be themselves. And women are awesome. Just listen to the guitars in Drunkdriver. That girl equals noise as well as noise equals her, and noise is what’s cool. So get up and make yours. Alright, I am Bill Pullman at the end of Independence Day!   

#350

I already miss being a guest columnist. Not because of some new pressure to get a column done every month, but rather it’s missing a different kind of pressure. When you write a guest column it means you really wanted to write something, so it mattered enough for you to suck yourself up and inject your ideas out onto the world. It’s like your first record. Or you could think about it like the first letter you typed in and worked on it painstakingly ‘til you hit the send button—you put everything you had you put into it. And now I’m just afraid I will stop to care cause I’m in an establishment. And as you may have learned from my columns so far. I hate establishments. Kids: Even if you think this is cool (or especially if you don’t) you should try to make something better because if you have the will you will succeed. Just make something you like and don’t stop until you think it’s cool. From then on no one’s opinion will matter.

Anyways, I did what I just suggested above and hurray I have become a regular columnist. Finally I can write about writing or not writing my columns. Or maybe I will just continue writing about unboyfriendable girls and drunk thoughts on music gathered together while listening to youth noise on night buses, drafted into my falling apart cell phone and shredded little pieces of xeroxed fliers, and with a pen the friend who is editing this gave me.

That is my face up there. I collected those scares after one of my bands played (our last show) with Supertouch. I mean the reformed Supertouch ‘cause unlike them I’m not old as fuck. I just have couple gray hairs but I blame myself for reading Catcher in the Rye too often so I can show these half-dead parts of my mop to cashier girls instead of my ID card when I’m buying booze at train stations.

Anyway what happened was my band played and because I’m not that into nostalgia I started hanging outside the show while Supertouch was searching for light. Sipping on the last couple bottles of our free backstage beers and somehow I happened to sit next to the roadie/merch guy for Supertouch. I bought some shots (more like Hungarian moonshine for him) and because I was too much myself they wanted to hang with me afterwards. ‘Cause after all, the city I live in is a city of insane parties and cheap drinks and I know some of the lowest places, but I had another agenda. See, I wanted to get together with this girl. Later I did and she was the love of my life. So I asked her out for some after-the-gig drinks but the Supertouch guys joined us, and kinda cock blocked me. So much for not liking New York hardcore! We were about to meet at my favorite bar with these so-called legends, but we went separately. And to be a funny gentleman who I really am I told this girl she should jump on my back and ride me like a horse. But also being the weak-ass drunk shit who I really am, I fell with her and smashed my face into the cold concrete. I shrugged it away and went on with a bleeding face into the night, met the Supertouch guys 20 minutes after, hit three bars and fought myself through a couple more shots and beers. Found out Mark Ryan was not in porn and maybe I might have rapped too often. Later on I found myself in the girl’s flat and I was puking in her toilet while cracking jokes about attending the public pool.

I woke the next morning up to her temporarily sheltered dog licking my balls. But still, there was no question when a few days later, while I played with my current band a debut show at a really drunk rehearsal room gig, I ended up at her place again making out secretly at her after-party a couple hours after some random punk friend puked on my coat.

So, kids and old farts: sometimes it’s worth it to smash your face into the ground, other times it really isn’t. One of the things I like to do most—and maybe I’m doing it so often that my mother once wanted to check me in to see if I’m autistic, but that was during the cold war and she had more to worry about, like nuclear bombs and stuff… but so I like to be in my head. Is it called daydreaming? Wondering? I like to call it being a punk cause most of the people in this world are not punks and they are boring so I have to be with myself to not wanna commit suicide out of boredom. Mix this inside my head with a one man rendezvous with music and maybe you get me.

 And sometimes the bad thing is when i go out and see an awesome band play and I feel like my face had just hit some kinda wall and it’s a bad, theoretical bleeding and knives in my back. This is not what supposed to happen. Don’t get me wrong I love mistakes and crazy reality, but sometimes I bless the holy Sid Vicious for the fact that most of my midnight jams’ bands are disbanded or not touring the part of Europe where I live. Ignorance is bliss. ‘Cause while seeing a band live is the thing, dancing and watching other people dance, getting your cloths soaked in cheap cigarette smoke while socializing with misfits... These things are cool. But sometimes what looks beautiful is rotten to the core. That’s why midnight music is a safety game. Midnight music is important for me. Either it’s happening out on the streets while I take night strolls or in my room laying in my bed staring on the cool mess of my room. Those are the moments when I’m just drifting, when my body is just a frame for a mind that’s open for anything that comes to it. So it’s like summer, when everything is alright and whatever is cool. These jams are like meditation. It’s not just hitting the lotus pose with shutdown eyes, it’s like in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 before they slay the bad guys—it just needs a special state of mind.

I’m kinda fragile during these nights, but that’s why I’m open for everything. And many of these jams are sometimes trespassing in the guilty pleasure territories. But punx seem to hate more on bands who could be major acts than major acts themselves. and I guess on one hand it’s lame that bands wanna sound like forced-to-be-listenable pop music, but on the other hand it’s cooler that they could be huge but they rather stay in basements. Anyway maybe those merciless haters are right and over-hyped bands are truly terrible—especially sometimes live. Sometimes they sadly are and it can be a huge letdown.

Two of the most hyped living-on-the-edge-of-punk bands are Iceage and Merchandise. I’ve seen both bands and while I loved them on records and even traveled to see them, both of them were a huge disappointment. And somehow in some strange coincidence I should also mention, after both shows girls gave me free weed and I puked my guts out on vague streets. So my midnight music naïvety got killed those nights. Both nights everything else seemed alright: good support bands, nice venues, awesome people, booze. And I love Iceage cause they are perfect mistake punks. And these soulless, kinda Bret Easton Ellis-character-kids have this Clockwork Orange-esque pure violence in them. So simple and natural I feel like a pretentious asshole for using even these cliché book references. Although I don’t really like riding with the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ crowd of the 2010s, I still like people who genuinely don’t give a fuck about others and live inside their bubbles (that’s why I miss being a guest columnist: I miss my bubble).

But I went to see Iceage as the next big thing—and they are so far from it. It’s not their fault but it’s insane that they are believed to be as if they were the only band formed by teenagers playing collapsing distorted music. When I saw them they were not yet casualties of the soulless rock biz: they were still a punk band, and somehow the same band I see every weekend at rehearsal room shows or if I go to my friends' practices. Iceage still were awkward, seemed lost and all this. But nothing made them more than my friends’ bands. It’s more my friends’ bands are better cause they are my friends. And my friends are not being hyped to be here to save rock and roll. They are saving their lives. The world doesn’t know about them cause they are lame teenagers—something Iceage stopped being thanks to the hype-age of the internet. Cause lame teenagers don’t get cover press from the whole world and screaming hot hipster girls in the front row tearing the band’s black metal shirts off while begging for an encore. Real punk life is not like this. This is a trick and in punk there’s no gimmicks needed. Not even made up ones. But gimmick is in a way forced on bands like Iceage by us tucking our heads way too far up in our asses and thinking, “Wow this is sooo real like nothing else.” They have a wonderful record that sounds innocent but vicious, like when you only have an idea what you want to do but not about how you want to do it. But at the same time it was recorded with an experienced guy in a good studio. And they are a great band but there are many great bands as well who luckily didn’t get the spotlight.

What’s charming in Iceage is charming only if we stopped to notice it everywhere else. Iceage is nothing original. And all I wanted when I saw them live was to be entertained. I wanted to bang my drunk head, smile and become wet from the crowd’s sweat. I wanted to feel like I still know the secret. But instead I felt like there’s no secret at all, just that the world reached a point where we are all burnt out enough to think they are a uniquely great band. No, it’s punk pure that’s great because Iceage is just like everyone else who’s raw, distrorted and honestly fucked up. Except to see them is a bit more expensive.

But I still remember everything else that happened that night. And in a way I forgot Iceage. I’m sure they are still great on record, in my room with me imagining who they are, what they are doing and why they are doing it. I mean it’s not as big of a fault to be unable to reproduce your magic in live as like being Skrewdriver.

And Merchandise, I have to mention too. Since I saw them I’m constantly listening to their new record. And it’s great. It’s a perfect ode to a night of high hopes and pre-broken hearts and import beers. Night lights and crossing bridges with loud night buses. Meeting friends and getting lost in your hometown. Being half awake after another ten hour shift and dancing in your mind, or being alone at work and dancing to full volume. Music for parties under blankets. But live, it was just... It was nothing. Sterile chaps who wanna get signed to Factory Records, but this is not the Hacienda and no super high girl offered us free MDMA. Although the record is still great.

Current midnight jam: Cro Mags' "Down But Not Out," but not without the image of Tony Molina stomping my spoiled brain.  Caged Animal 2012.

more columns about bad records and girls

I love music. Mostly because it’s done by people, and I hate music when I can’t feel people behind it just people in front of it. I hate music other occasions as well but the worst is when you only feel like it’s a service provided for a perfectly targeted and specific audience. Once I read a great line in a review about a band’s show that said the problem with them was that they wanted to seem like a band looking forward but rather they were just looking around for others’ reactions, whoring themselves for their attention. And for me this not only translates to shallow wannabe Dadaist no-wave bands but for all immoral, mainstream music in general.

I love music when its players are looking inside themselves and forgetting what’s right and what’s wrong and who will give what kind of shit. Nothing to prove, nothing to lose. But then I also just love when they are creating something unexpected, and this column will be mostly about awful records which I do not love, but I guess they still hold some higher meaning not only for punk but for life in general as well.

Because sometimes I really just love music and music itself, the whole thing. Not just some bands but sometimes every band. I don’t feel like bands have to have an agenda. They should be whatever they want to be and being boring is one of these things. I never want progress from bands. Maybe I’m a terrible music nerd ‘cause I never really can say who my favorite band is and which is my favorite record. I only know what my favorite song is currently. I knew what was my favorite band but I’m not so sure anymore. I just don’t see the point. I used to have a best friend but we have gone cold and I haven’t even talked to the guy for more than two years. Since then I have many people I love but could not put them in order cause I just don’t feel the need. They are just people who are interesting, understanding or just not fucking hard for me to stand. And music is the same to me if not better cause I guess sometimes I like my turntable better than people.

Sure, often I get floored by one band’s unique awesomeness, but other occasions I just listen to bands’ endless flow of rehearsal room demos recorded before they broke up and vanished forever, and just staying in my constant state of loving punk in general. I never desire “progress” from a band when I feel like they have reached the point where they are playing whatever they want to. I don’t want a punk band to end up sounding like Factory Records could have released them cause then I would just rather listen to someone that was born to play such music. I love when bands do progress and something cool comes out but I never have any problem with the Ramones-esque approach of playing and recording the same song over and over again for decades. All I want is bands to be themselves. They should die to tell me their stories and this attitude should trigger reviews like the legendary Sniffing Glue’s Clash one.

Music is interesting because it’s done by people and people are strange and fucked up and funny. I guess a bit it’s like love. Or relationships and break ups, finally-fulfilled love and the always-burning feeling of being afraid of ending up alone for the rest of our lives. When we find true love we just want to anchor it and sometimes we forget in a relationship there are at least two poles. So while being happy yourself, there might be someone on the other end who wants something different from you. That is when just you find true love and it doesn’t find you. But luckily while boyfriends/girlfriends (and by the same token, bands as well) can come and go, records can stick with us in their full glory. ‘Cause after all, records are memories that are better than photographs. The confusion comes when we can’t tell the difference between the past and present, we want to stick to bands we used to love, the partners we used to love.

So because there is this connection for me, I really hate fucking professionalism when it comes to making music, but also professionalism in the fan-dom of music—because if real life is always in flux and forcing us to adapt, so should our approach to loving music.

Maybe it comes from me being incapable of accepting culture as a rule—like somehow there is fine art and it’s opposite. I just think there are people who are expressing themselves and people who get it or not. I hate it when people go beyond being critics and start to act like fucking producers, managers or band members who know better and feel like they are in charge to make decisions. All those lame people complaining: “That band should have broken up after that record,” “They shouldn’t sound like this,” “Why do they keep doing this?”  Why do you keep doing this?

You know, while it might entertaining to treat bands like football teams and want them to come home with good results, it’s also a schizoid thing to do. I hate Bad Brains I Against I (and everything after) but why would I be disappointed in them fully? It’s definitely not good that they stopped making good music at one point and just turned into a boring proto nu-metal shit, but I can live with that cold fact. Maybe I won’t be the biggest fan of the upcoming Fucked Up records, but I can let them go and I’ll stick to Generation or even that song “Twice Born.” But sometimes bands just grow boring. And it’s in a way obvious. People like to play music and write new music but some genres have their own barriers in creativity. And some bands are fine with this. Or their listeners have barriers to being open ‘cause after all listening to music is not a duty—that’s why having limits to our attention is natural and to except otherwise is an unnatural snobbish thing to demand.

The end of the ‘80s were a perfect example of bands making it intentionally challenging to listen albums, while nowadays it’s more like bands breaking up and reforming in other genres and having million side projects. Now it’s the music that’s changing within punk and not the bands. Just take Johnny Moped or Swell Maps from the past and Home Blitz, Merchandise, the Young, the Men from the present. Bands who are rooted in punk but from the start trying to do something different. Nowadays if Saccharine Trust wanted to do a horrible jazz band, they’d do some spin-off project rather than keep playing with the same name.

I also don’t think a label like Matador “kills” good punk music ‘cause good punk music wouldn’t even be signed by a such label. No beef with them, but it’s not a punk label. I doubt that SSD really believed that they could be such big hard rock stars. I doubt that bands like Meat Puppets played such beautifully chaotic music that so perfectly represents teenage confusion only because that was all what they had at the time, and really deep down they wanted to be a mellowed out pothead country band that they are right now. Why would people wanna play terrible music if they got popular playing awesome music?

I just chalk up these “changes in direction” to total craziness. Getting into a bubble where you only care about yourself. When you allow yourself to be embarrassing and crazy. When you think you are the best or could just do anything, and not for money or for fame. It’s just that heart of darkness megalomaniac obsessive craziness. Like being in love when you open up way too much. Bad records are like other people’s love, or the things that make us feel like depressed, so you could say that from these records we can learn about them and ourselves as well—in general about human existence. Isn’t this the point of Into the Unknown?

Most of the time good punk bands’ terrible records are cheap copy-cats of a genre they wanna ape. And it doesn’t matter how good musicians they are cause mostly it’s about stepping forward and discovering what they are capable of. Into the Unknown. But these shit records are the perfect testimonies of their true punk heart and nothing more. Cause great music is rather played by enthusiasm than by hands. And a punk can’t play shitty music with enthusiasm. Cause punks are not assholes. We can’t betray our hearts! 

So these bad albums are not just total failures for not succeeding in a new territory but more because they are just boring as shit, but somehow with that awkward style like when a charming kid who is smart in kindergarten tries to talk to the adults. This is punk’s point, I think. We are who we are, and doing what we want cause we want it. Not because we are not ready or equipped enough.   

While these records are born in the bubble of total confidence of their makers, to us listeners it’s everything outside the bubble. It’s life and living. In these records there is happiness and sorrow and joy and boredom. And maybe punx are sometimes not too ready or equipped for these, cause “real life never meant too much for us,” right? These records are like the opening monologue of Annie Hall: the living proofs that sometimes temporary mentally illness is not a too harmful thing—for some of us. The rest of the listeners are dying out of disappointment, and their loyalty for eternal quality is amazing, but as I said they are stupid as well. Cuz it’s beautiful isn’t it? The whole thing: bands going crazy and either their fans following them into falling down and losing all their glory or being heart broken by that familiar betrayal of stopping to write awesome songs.


I mean, while the Wipers are one of the greatest bands ever, we all know that Greg Sage sucks in soloing, but he sticks to it!  On the other hand, straight edge bands starting to do coke and playing U2 music? 7 Seconds turning into soft rock shit and Dag Nasty being even worse?  The math rock, white jazz downfall of SST and the static, serious studio sound of infinite other bands. I don’t think anyone who loved Die Kreuzen Cows and Beer would have wanted a record like Century Days or Cement.

Maybe we should take more advice from Daniel Johnston when he is singing “I love you more than myself.” And while it’s one of the most heartbreaking sentences in the history of weird music, sometimes it’s also true. By accepting the border lines between bands and us, we can accept that they are doing something they want to. This doesn’t mean that we should support these acts with full heart. Just let them leave with a gentle smile and a warm hug for the amazing records they gave us while the only thing they were really doing was playing the music they loved to play.

I always looked on records as capturing a moment that the band wanted to capture—but only that moment. That’s why it’s hard to make a good record. ‘Cause sometimes the worst pictures taken are from the best parties. Or our coolest memories are connected to friends who later turned to assholes. But maybe bad records could make us love good records more. Love people more. To remind us to want to be forever in that moment when everything was fine.