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.   

rat life

Have you ever seen an 18 year-old kid being truly happy? One who still goes to high school hell in a blown-out industrial town and already knows how shitty real life is? And not just smiling and having second thoughts on suicide but glowing like he just figured it out? Not what people will find out later but what they lose at the very beginning. Then next to him seeing some older and more fucked up men with the usual halo, forgetting everyday mess of underpaid jobs, warehouse cold and drug addict misfortunes. It’s the feeling that you can turn whichever direction you want and you will see people you just love to have around, even if you are traveling in a dirty train car without heat, through a freezing snow storm drinking warming up beer and losing all possible ability to think straight; just smiling like a lunatic from happiness, exhaustion and being tipsy. It’s not only about eating free pizza, drinking beer against a hangover, listening to Dinosaur Jr. and cracking jokes on a day after a sick punk rock show a hundred miles away from the place you usually sleep—it’s about finding yourself in this rat life most of us want to maintain.

I grew up in parking lots around a shithole town, a capital of awakening post-cold war disaster. Smashing shit and my body as well. Dealing with drunk security guards and listening to stories told by homeless people. Hanging out on the streets, eating shit when hitting the concrete—skateboarding. Trying to do it while I sucked. But I loved the constant rush of doing something. Whenever I held the board and threw it in front of me, I was always among my friends and within the streets. I was no street kid. I just loved the vibes of constantly being out there. Spending my time among interesting people with different backgrounds. Somehow this was being creative about how to form an alternative world that’s just ours and not fucking lame just like others.

I had a bed but I always found it way more appealing for myself to sleep on floors, around friends and half-eaten sandwiches and smashed beer cans. Started getting wasted around 14 and had these weird smoking parties when a couple of us just got high and we danced to dance punk hits, then i had paranoia my friend’s dog will eat my face if I fall asleep. Looked shit, talked shit, thought shit, felt shit. Then became a punk, and a music geek. Found a band full with people whose previous bands raised me and parking lots were replaced by moldy rehearsal rooms under the ground of abandoned industrial sites. Shows, being drunk, travelling, sleeping under the stars, in stinky cars, in squats, drugs, puking, not eating. All this shit. Having shitty jobs. Hating bosses, falling for girls and not getting love. Sweating on stages, struggling at home writing new stuff, freezing in rehearsal rooms while practicing and working out songs. Having no idea what to do with life. Sleepless nights and blackouts. Cooking for bands, putting as many upside down crosses on flyers as possible, hanging with weirdos. Meeting fucked up people and falling in love with them. Up-all-night-ing. Eating junk food and watching fist fights while waiting for night buses.

All guts no glory. Lucid living. This is life.

This is life for me cause after all that’s what I have chosen. I’ve never been forced. I’m a fucking socially retarded person but, at the same time I feel like this is the way for me to be, and not because some jocks never accepted me. I haven’t even ever really met them—I was too busy dealing with my own punk shit. I started doing my things ‘cause I always wanted to do music and writing.

I remember one specific summer. When I did nothing but I was working on what is still my masterpiece. It’s a sixty-page zine I wrote mostly drunk from booze and enthusiasm, high on either music high or caffeine. What I like, what I feel about songs what kind of images my brain gathers by the help of these tunes. At the time I was reading then James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist and got obsessed with how he described hell through thirty fanatic pages. I wanted this, but with music. But I was living my own boring hell—I wanted to reproduce such perfection, not repeat it.

I was writing this zine like a maniac. All I was doing and thinking on was this zine. I slept 5 hours everyday I woke up early morning, opened the file on my computer and stared all day long on it. I did nothing else. Except sometimes I went out walking and blasted a beautiful song. And I just felt like my life right now is a huge piece of shit. But if a song like this could exist in this mess then life couldn’t be that cruel after all. And I wanted was to be in that song. I wanted to put those feelings on paper. I wanted this constant feeling I always missed. To let it overtake my life and live among these harmonies. Have the strength of such beautiful material made by a human being. I wanted this song to be my life. I wanted my life like this: fragile but beautiful.

Seeing a high school student smile, you can hear him state he just wants this. Going to shows with his friends, eating pizza, drinking beer, sleeping on people’s floor having fun. And realizing he is right and this is what all of us should do. Because this kind of life is the fulfilled beauty of that song. And what I wanted then I finally have that now. It’s not much but for some of us it’s everything. And we should deserve this. We should be able to have some incognito jobs, slack around for a little money and more free time to be fully alive with the adventures of surviving life as a punk.

The only thing better with skateboarding vs. punk is it’s instant satisfaction. You just roll and you are doing it. While with punk you have to find a band, then a rehearsal room, figure out songs, practice them, record them, release them, book shows, go to shows. It’s slow and it’s not happening all the time. Or it wasn’t till now, ‘cause in this rat life of punk that I’ve found I’m able to find myself: being up at night, thinking on booking bands, planning and writing collaboration zines. Brainstorming on starting new bands, lyrics for old ones, and how to start a zine publishing collective. Helping each other or just rotting at bars talking shit. Talking about punk, how cool it is or what’s so fucking lame about it. Jamming at the rehearsal room on a drunk and sweaty summer night. Seeing my friend amazingly drunk walking on his knees to Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and barking, while an 8 year-old is playing drums. The night before that having a six hour-long train ride and speaking through the whole trip, smoking weed, blasting ideas from 4 to 10 am. Skinny dipping in a fake lake at middle of a small town few hours before that. Just being with amazing people. Making Molotov cocktails in a forest and shooting Manowar fan-video clips with a flaming toy sword. Midnight record listening sessions through headphones.

Blasting girls’ anger on the fucking world—Nog Watt and Tozibabe followed by Silla Electrica. Wanting to xerox some inspiring zines and burn a dvd with Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains to a girl gang so they can rise up and tell us guys to fuck off. Cuz I hate ‘girlfriends’ and ‘[someone]’s girlfriend, the status. Girls who are reduced—or reduce themselves—to being accessories for assholes.  The dominance these jerk boyfriends are putting on them. I adore girls who are putting on Wipers songs on New Years Eve and making us swear to dance. But how could we resist such offers? And I adore her not because I like the Wipers so she is like us dudes who do, but because she wanted to dance to this song with all of her heart.

I love midnight rides for beer with skateboards or bikes. Except when I smash my face into the concrete. Never ride your decks stoned, drunk and heart broken. I love telling cops they can write me fucking checks for walking on a snow covered road, wrestling with my friend but they have no power over me. I love punk flats and their communal living—when one doesn’t ‘take advantage’ of each other’s kindness but they are sharing their kindness as well. Taking each other to hospitals. Hugging out nervous breakdowns. Playing our hearts out for a handful of people drunk. Not really shredding the right chords all the time but feeling like there is nothing else I would rather do, there’s no other people I would rather do it with, and there is no other people I would rather have around. Even if it’s for a few hours, it’s true then and I won’t forget it. Inspiring each other, the stories and everything. Falling asleep on each other’s body parts. Almost crying or crying for real. Late night phone calls. Drinking after 12 hours of work—or drinking for 12 hours before work. Just bonding. And not just being only fucking associates in punk—something more.  Like actually talking about what brought you to this music in the first place—and what keeps bringing you back to it constantly.

But then there’s also all the fucked up shit beyond this. Of how this is a struggle. A struggle to be able to have all this. But fuck the whole boring world. It’s a political piece you are reading now cause it’s always political when it’s about us and them. For me punk is not really a direct resistance. It’s more about a completely different universe I picked to live in and being constantly surprised how thousands of other people are on the same page with me. Reading for the first time the lyrics of Comet Gain’s “Why I Try to Look So Bad” and just not being fully able to fully believe that someone put on paper exactly how I look on the world.

Are you afraid as well? Me too. I don’t wanna give in. I wanna fake that I’m trying and secretly be happy with an ordinary job that lets me buy some records and concert tickets next to my bread.

But the difference between punk and being boring, or so-called life and this punk life is that what we have is easy to achieve but hard to maintain. With punk the “top of your career” is the reality that you can stay young forever.

There were several weeks in my life when I was just out there. My daily routine was focused around punk vibes. I just simply lost contact with the life all of us should do to survive. But what kind of surviving is it when you live for nothing? During those days I lived like nothing but for real somethings. Barely ate, drank way too much, slept under the stars, in bus stops, on cold floors. But there were always those 20 minutes. Those 20 minutes what mattered and made me forget what just happened before and what will after. We live for those 20 minutes and we live for real in those 20 minutes. It’s not only about music. Songs, sets, tours, being a fan. It’s about finding the true gold even in the rat life of punk. And that gold is…

let them be punks

Sometimes when our heads are too far up our own asses, even when we are right we are just right in our own situations.  Despite the much-talked-about global-ness of punk, and despite all the politics, it’s still a scene with so many fucked up assumptions—but for a lot of us in other parts of the world, they’re not the one’s you may think.

One of my old bands once got a review that praised us but also said he expected something worse because of our nationality. I didn’t get it racist cause we Europeans are like this. Al Burian wrote about one of my other bands that we could be huge in Europe if we were Americans. Look, your location matters. Saying otherwise is a lie. If you live in the Northwestern part of Europe you can reach four-to-six different countries within few hours that get ‘big coverage’ in the punk press. You play a decent show in Germany and the message boards will be all over you. Then you’ll be able to tour the whole of Germany. Later some label will want to release your records, you’ll have cool live shots of your gigs all over the place, some youtube videos and that’s it. You made it. This sounds so cut-and-dry professional but it’s true. We are somehow this professional.

But it’s not just punk rock marketing—your location matters in how all of us do our punk as well—and on every level: as fans and as participants; how we consume and produce our music; our perspectives and our ethics.

What I will talk about now is the arrogance in punk rock—or more specifically, arrogance in ‘first world’ punk rock, because there is a difference. And when it’s on it’s blind as fuck. An easy example is how nowadays with gourmet food being all the rage, these gastro nazis could make you feel bad if you are not eating food that is in the best quality or prepared as it’s done in a top restaurant. But you have to eat, otherwise you die. And if you are punk you have to be punk, you have to put out, you have to get, you have to go. But for some of the most die-hard ‘punks’ I run into, animal rights is important as long as they can consume the same exact taste that is made out of something without a nervous system. Watch them try to teach a poor person (or poor punks for that matter!) in my country how to eat healthier or more ethical—it’s totally embarrassing!

Sometimes it’s really just more important what we do than how we get it done. There were bands on the road way before emails, not just before Facebook, but it also wasn’t usual that your friends could go out on tour with only a demo or an EP and sleep around squats and eat overcooked pasta with ketchup. It’s cool if I type in Sex Vid into google and the only thing I will encounter is making me wash my hands 5 minutes later, but who needs internet when the biggest fanzine in the world is your devoted fan? It’s easy to play the ‘I don’t care’ card when the world cares about you. There’s a whole made up genre of bands who are hard to trace but got the hype. It’s easy not to say a word when everyone is just waiting for you to speak.

But if you never were on the map then you’ve been born invisible. I have booked three tours by myself through long months, a million e-mails and bending over maps with a gas calculator and many of the shows went through friends whose bands I’ve booked here in my town. But without social network sites we couldn’t have ever kicked off. Without Myspace or Facebook I couldn’t have booked bands that helped me later, and whose members have become my good friends. And yet this a total first-world luxury to be able to eschew these things and say “fuck Facebook” and try to exist “under the radar” and still be able to tour, put out music, etc. 

The fixation with the format of our music is another example of this ‘let them eat cake’ mentality. Look, I get it. Vinyl is punk and tapes are coming back as well. CD is crap, MP3 is slacking. And it’s true. As an owner of some vinyls I agree—they are great and they are the best. They are magic. And to be honest it was a painful job when I spent three days cutting worn out mix tapes to the same exact length or to dub our demo over days-worth dubs of MTV’s 120 Minutes, but they looked awesome and I was proud of my work. I always looked on our CDs as crap but that was our only chance!

Because you know what? Here where I live there’s no vinyl making. Because the industry—like everything else in the communist-era—was owned by the state, so after the collapse the record plants got shut down and never reopened. And it’s actually illegal here to make and sell materialized records if you don’t register your songs. So even old farts who are somehow equipped to make you 12” plastic discs in their basements for a ridiculously high price are scared cause you have to ‘own’ your songs first. But who wants to do that? The closest place to get records pressed otherwise is the Czech Republic where if I order 500 copies of 7” (which I will never sell cause I’m in an unknown band from eastern Europe) I have to pay like 4 dollars each!  That’s a lot of money here! And we didn’t even start talking about the cost of the cover and packaging! Then consider I also live far from bigger (read: richer) cites and have to work a lot so touring beyond 1 or 2 weeks means loosing my job or I just simply wont eat for the rest of the month. We don’t have a label cause we can’t tour that much so no one knows about us, or really would care because, again, we’re from an unfashionable place in the eyes of the tastemakers...  I could go on and on, but I don’t want to make this a sob story about me…

So when someone says they don’t listen to CDs cause it’s way too easy to make, I get fucking angry. Yeah, burning a CD is an easy job, but writing the songs that are on that shinny fucking plastic maybe took fucking months you idiot. You are fixating on the dumb format and covering your ears to a band who rot at their rehearsal room, spent many long months to make songs you shrug away just because it’s on a CD? Yeah, it feels better to be put out on vinyl cause that means someone with money cares enough about your music to put it out. But you can dub a tape at home, you can burn a CD at home, and from our perspective, doing these things at home gives us the feeling of we’ve gained something already.

It’s like getting published in MRR: Would it change what I’m saying if this was just another post on my blog? So this is arrogance as well. My friends were kinda proud and happy when they made it into the pages of MRR in a scene report. But (like almost all the scene reports) I wrote it on my own, not as some ‘beat reporter’ for MRR. Nobody asked me to write it. So what was significant about it? They already knew what I thought about them. Again, being validated matters, but the look doesn’t change what what’s being said, or the content that’s being covered.

It’s the same thing for me with owning records. I like to own them. I like the covers, the smell, the stories, the feel I had when I bought them. It was a religious moment when I first heard “Where is my Mind” by the Pixies on vinyl. Something in my chest started levitating. And it was amazing to be 80% blind from booze at a record-listening house party but finding the right record and putting it on. Singing Nerves songs drunk with a guy who looked like a bad guy from a French cartoon, showing him the lyric sheet with lines about my love life; the next morning watching my host put all his LPs back in order and stare at record covers for long hours…

These things are cool but owning things is also a cultural headhunt—putting things on the shelves like trophies. We feel like they represent us like the shirts we wear. Not just to other people but to me as well. I’m being reminded how awesome I am constantly. I look at my shirt and I feel great cause I own a shirt like this, I like a band like this, I listen to a band like this so I’m something like this. I look good, my room looks good, I feel great cause my thoughts look great. But buying records is not easy! When I mailorder records from where I am the postage price doubles the price of my record! And many places don’t even ship here! There’s not a single good shop or distro in here either. So while I love distros—browsing through them drunk and just finding something I have to have, driven by pure and delirious instincts—I still listen to most of my music in mp3 anyway. So why is it different or any worse?

Sometimes when I speak about records I feel like cheating when I say I have them cause I only really have them in digital format. But I still have feelings for them. They made me happy, angry, or sad. I know these records, I like them, I listen to them. And they sound the same. I mean, not really, but who cares about ‘bit rate’ when you are listening to Perdition or Lebenden Toten! I think actually the shittiness of crappy mp3s might even make them more evil, fragile, bedroom-ish and punk. Or maybe not. I don’t know! I wanna know though. Cause after all I hear them from a source but I hear them in my head too, and that’s where it matters most.

I remember being a kid thinking that if they translated all the comic books I would buy them all, but wondering at the same time, where would I keep them? There is not enough space in my room. But now I love music. I’m a music nerd but I can’t be a record geek cause if I wanna buy punk records I would have to stop being a punk and be someone instead who earns lots of money—so basically is a fucking asshole—just to be able to house all these records! Some people say they only listen to their LPs, meaning they stopped caring for new music. So they stopped being a punk and instead they just like to listen to punk bands they used to like, and by limiting their curiosity they can buy all presses and colors of the beloved totems of their youth, while I know that I will never own all the records I like.

Another thing: maybe what we do is secret but sometimes we just practice this line way too serious and we create more secrets than necessary.  90% of the bands say they are here for getting their message out. Sharing their stories, their frustration, making other people think or feel less alienated. But yet while most bands have their own presence or coverage on the internet, barely anyone is sharing their lyrics there. It has become yet another privilege of the record buyers to go through the lyrics sheets – and you know what?  I don’t think most of them even do! And this is the essence of first-world punk privilege and arrogance—not even really taking advantage of it!

But it’s true, even when I have the mp3s of a record I love, I still I miss the damn thing. Not the chance to see the matrix message, or put it on the shelf and feel great that I ‘own’ it, no—it’s the lyric sheet. The message that I know I don’t know. Even born speakers of English have doubts about specific lines and why would it hurt to share your own lyrics on your own platform on the internet? We are part of a message and thinking-based subculture but the main message of the music is hidden or relies on our pockets’ credibility? Sounds pretty fucked up to me.

All of us who these typed-in thoughts concern—we wanna read the lyrics, hold the records—ours and others’—we want go on tour without dealing with lame corporate internet band profiles. Some people out there are able to have all these things and even more. But they should never forget that they are lucky to be like this.  Yeah, your location matters, but how you deal with it matters even more.

how to do their own punk

What happened was I did myself a favor. This last year, I finally started working, I went to a high school reunion to tell my teachers how they tried to kill my brain and how great a job they did on my fellow classmates. Yeah, I was drunk and of course I stole some shit as well from some random classroom. But that’s how it usually goes, right? I fell in love with a girl who broke my heart but at least for the first time I had made love to someone I really loved. To heal my heart I traveled alone to a foreign city, ate vegan pizza with German punk celebrities and did speed from a filthy toilet seat at an illegal and underground dance club with a guy who rambled about the greatness of Bob Dylan, so I dropped my pants and showed him my third tattoo I got one day months earlier with those mythical four bars and the slogan ‘punk love.’

This column will be about punk love. Summoning everything, I have done more adult stuff in one year than maybe I should have, but as I said I did myself a favor. I can still evoke my younger self without the need to make up excuses for why I’m not that person we planned I would be. Maybe I haven’t stayed naïve and curious. I’m jaded more than even a grandpa should be but instead of glorifying my past I’m amazed by my present. Punk is at least for me about the present—staying young, ugly and smart. And mostly because I don’t believe in excuses. Why should anyone make those? Why would we do things we don’t really want? I don’t even believe in guilty pleasures. There’s no guilt in love. There’s no innocence as well. It’s just pure enthusiasm and blindfolded-diving into joy.

Punk love.
 For the first time this year I paid to sleep in a hostel. That’s where I had a huge revelation. I spent money to sleep in a “nice” hostel, and It was terrible. Before I was just hanging out at a hostel where my friend works. I wanted to sleep on a cold floor but be around a host I had known for years, or even one I just met hours ago but who I know will be cool cause fuck knows, we dress the same so we feel the same.

Seriously if you wear ripped jeans, sneakers and band t-shirts just hit me up and I will make you breakfast. And even though I was there with my friends I still felt alienated. And I felt that this is not real. Cause why would a room be real when the door only opens with money? Whenever I travel I always sleep where real people live. So I have to find punks around the world and convince them I will be cool to have around. And we will have these drunk late night conversations, nerding out on records or just learning from each others’ thoughts. Otherwise I stay on the streets and drink rum with war veteran homeless guys as I did in England once. It was great as well, it’s always great when it’s real. I want it in the pure form and this is the pure form. Hostels, big clubs, contracts, managers—you are stupid and too easy to achieve.

Lately the majority of the shows I went to took place at rehearsal rooms and I loved it cause finally we can be free. And there was no security or other bullshit policy system that clubs like to bust our balls with. Not even a fucking fight happened and it’s a big thing in Eastern Europe when you mix together angry, desperate kids in a small room with booze and loud music. I didn’t miss anything, and I couldn’t even imagine if something was missing. Heat? I was around many people and we sweated. I didn’t even need a cloak room cause I knew my friends wouldn’t steal my winter coat. It was just perfect.

But then either me or something else changed and all I saw around me was establishment. And I hate it. There is just no fun in establishments. I like changing, learning, improving and, I don’t know, just not rotting in one fucking spot. Even circulations are cool. They are always cool. My heart is always with people who can listen to bands and dress and think like they did when they were 16. But I like how my taste and the whole meta taste of the cosmical international punk community is changing and how we rediscover things let it be the Wipers or the whole good part of the ‘90s.  
Establishment sucks cause it makes things easy and when things are easy people get lazy. And I can feel there is a wall we built around ourselves cause there’s just nowhere further to go, we think. While the top is still far to reach. More so in punk there is no top to reach at all. It’s just a constant struggle and you die. But without struggle life would be fucking boring. And let’s face it it’s already has been very very boring. All of us could have it much easier. Like get a job with a shirt and tie and buy fancy shits to kill time. We are making it harder.

But where is the agenda in going anywhere when the tendency is go to a show and see every weekend the same bands, playing the same songs to the same people at the same place and people just no longer care. They no longer care about the rage in the songs, bands don’t careabout saying something new or just anything that still matters. As I see we just no longer care for a show, for a band, for the magic, we just wanna socialize, drink beer, have funny but shallow conversations and save our weekends instead of saving our lives.

In the message boards everybody is saying the show was good but the after party with nostalgic songs was even better. And I’m fully on the side of dancing but not to nostalgic stupid songs we half laugh, cause ‘yeeea this is what I was listening to when I was a kid.’ You are still a kid if you’re still a punk and kids are open to new things, they wanna learn, they wanna know everything in the world and everything what is new is magical to them. And this is what I can’t really see. It has become entertainment. Fucking instead of love making. I love new bands but it’s just sad when they are dragged out from the rehearsal room cause “we heard you are playing music and everybody is curious so please come” and by then these bands become just products for promotion but it’s no problem cause everybody will applaud cause we’re all friends.

That applause is the establishment. It’s good to witness people feeling awkward and willing to die behind their instruments, but I just wish them some extra months in the rehearsal room. Or I should just go to their practices. And witness their magic there. ‘Cause why the fuck not? I love shows but there is some more intimate magic in going to someone’s rehearsal.

And it sounds good on paper that most of the new bands I have seen this year sounded like Beat Happening trying to play Negative Approach songs, but the truth is I missed confidence from these players. Feeling awkward and shy wasn’t what they wanted. And the simplicity of punk always satisfies you with the joy of getting what you wanted. Cause you are able to get it yourself if you try. But as a good friend of mine said, some bands are just too into the vibe of doing band stuffs than trying to write good songs and being a truly good band. If you wanna get satisfied by others you can be disappointed, while if you are reaching for your own acceptance you will never be fully let down.


To say again, establishments are terrible. Just go to Germany and I swear you will get bored of anti-fascism. Cause we are always anti-something and it makes everything easy. The problem is somehow this. Most of us define ourselves by what we are not doing, so I see more awful pictures of tortured animals than awesome photos of delicious food made out of veggies. We are heroes by not doing things. So we stopped doing things. You are good by not being racists, by not looking on women as a weaker sex, by not supporting countless ignominious companies.

Rebellion has become something we can adopt. And it gives you nothing ‘cause you are just an opposite and not an alternative. And this gives you nothing. It’s like a reunion show. Maybe it’s good or magical—like seeing Hot Snakes was magical—but a reunion show never gives more than a more lively presentation of some songs of a disbanded group. It tells you nothing about what is happening right now, shows no connection to what you are doing right now. Establishment makes you stop being yourself. That’s why punk should never be fully established. And even by me saying this—thou shalt not do — it really means that you shouldn't believe me.

Cause what I’m bored of is the theater all of us are playing when we forget about ourselves. It’s when we start to tell others how to do their own punk. Cause I believe in this. There is no such thing as punk in general. There is no agenda punk should do, it’s not like something that could be defined by a purpose of what we have to achieve or something that is depending on the people who are in it. Or it does depend on the people in it but then we should just accept whatever that is. Cause whatever it is we are making it that way. And in that we are there—you as well as I. So stop saying how it should be, who should do it and all this shit. People are sad cause it’s no longer a threat? Really? Then make it be one. Don’t wait on others. Don’t be upset and paralyzed because everyone around you is doing it their way which is different than yours. And what the fuck will happen if something is different then what you do? I’ve started my zines, my bands, my blogs because I did not like what others were doing and I just knew that if I make them on my own it will be good, cause I know I will like it.

But I have never questioned the right of existence of lame things. I could tell the majority of the world that Ceremony sucks ass, that they are a bad band who are punk only for kids who exclusively listen to hardcore. Hardcore with caps lock. Hardcore with contracts and hotel rooms and baggy clothes and gymnastic moves. But I trust the members of Ceremony that they are doing whatever they like to do and I trust their listeners that maybe they know they could listen to better bands but they have chose to listen to crap instead. Because it’s just enough for them. Just because music isn’t for everyone doesn’t mean whoever doesn’t have a minimum of enthusiasm to be late for dates or work because there’s still one more song I should listen to, that they shouldn’t be allowed to listen to music at all. Or punk music either. Just like how gay marriage won’t break up our parents pact of eternal love, lame people won’t destroy our punk either. I know this myself because I spent too much fucking time bragging about what is shit instead of making an alternative. Nothing has changed and I still like good things and want to do good things even if forgetting myself and being a critic is easier.

And what if people will think what I’m doing is crap? Well I won’t care ‘cause I like what I’m doing  so much that I don’t need others’ acceptance. I hate people begging for respect. Do something you can respect and maybe people who think the same or be able to spot real things will respect you. But mostly old guys are addicted to young kids’ respect. And they don’t get it cause they stopped doing awesome things decades ago. But just because something is said ten years ago it won’t make it truer due to the fact it’s older. The Bible is something like that and we don’t wanna be Christians. Cause even scientologists are more up to date than old crucifix lovers.

It’s not an unnatural thing to be bummed out by others. And it’s even more natural to just stop caring. We are punx and we are extraordinary. I’m tired of this. I’m also tired of people seeing punk as something that is up to the punks who are doing it. The punks who are around us. Yeah maybe a scene is what people are making it, but there is always smaller parts that makes the scene. And that’s your punk.

Sometimes we act like this is a ship and from wherever a new wind comes we are fucked. But we are swimming in the ocean. Don’t be afraid of being alone. Cause being alone means you are being yourself and if you can be yourself people might just like who you are—not just where you are and who you know.

I know for a fact that there is nothing better than walking alone at night in abandoned neighborhoods when the weather is foggy and wet and you just listen to the best music that is noisy but still beautiful. Cause everything is beautiful when it’s played by eternal kids and heard through headphones while the freezing air tries to break you. I got so psyked one autumn night listening to Void and the Libyans I got goose bumps and I just wanted to stay out on the streets, walk a million miles alone until the sun came up. Or when I went to have a relationship-reconciliation-speak and was listening to Sonskull on the bus and couldn’t really believe anything could be better heared. My lonely twelve hour train ride back home from Germany blasting The Men’s second LP for 4 hours straight and forgetting about all my annoying travelmates. Or last night walking in a foggy forest to Universal Order of Armageddon and been amazed by how beautiful some of their guitar parts are.

But this is music. Strength in solitude comes when you just have thoughts that you gather together by only you, or when you are losing yourself in a crowd just focusing on how and what you feel. These things. Dancing like you don’t care. Or dancing because you care and wanna show them. Please always care and do things you feel like you want to do. I know it sounds too typical. But it also feels fucking good which is not a too typical a feeling in this existence. And see I’m doing it again now. Forgetting myself and telling you what to do. Anarchists never say please come closer. They believe people are standing wherever they want to stand and they don’t wanna tell others what to do. When you are in love you just don’t care about what others do cause they can’t change your happiness. When you are in love you are just capable and willing to do anything. When you are in love you’re just able to be yourself without the need to make excuses. This is punk love and I know it won’t dump me.

The Hungarian Defekt Punk Scene Report in MRR #336

Out in the dark. While the snow is obstinately falling on my town. Feeling alright. There is a mix of sludgy melting snowflakes and my smile on my face. I feel great because memories from the last night are coming back. I was at a house party but since a couple months, every house party means a bit more than smoking in the kitchen and getting dizzy from cheap beer while nodding to ironic or nostalgic, stupid songs. I was out in the dark last year and did the exact same circle around my neighborhood as I did tonight. Maybe I had a similar ink stamp on my wrist from the show last night, or maybe still a few nights before. The only thing that has been changed is that now I have house parties to go to and have fun with people there. When the routine bites hard you could tell that you probably have an OK scene. When you’re in love with a specific trend it must be an explosion within the scene. And even giving it a name means something more, because names are only given to big things. When I thought about all these kids as a crowd, I came up with “Defekt Scene” as the definition. There was one specific show where most of the people who showed up looked like those that remained from the male population after a war fought in the recent past, who were weak enough to be left behind the safe lines because they are not even good for first-row bullet catchers.

Almost a year ago I have attended a house party in the deep countryside in a barn. I went there to have fun not to witness some kind of magic. I never hated the kids, I always was pissed off by the old people who made up stupid rules or routines to scare away little kids from doing anything out of their hearts not out from a stupid fake ethical code. Although I never was too social with people I had nothing to do with this. I liked people from a distance. But at that party I felt the youth, connecting, rebellion and fun. It was a party full of people who at other parties would be in the corner, completely invisible. Poor wallflowers. Here everyone mattered and it was amazing. Everyone shared their beers, jokes, equipment and contacts for foreign show promoters. Everyone was nice and the bands were kinda great too. Leaving with a huge positive emotional charge I watched all these kids at the shows and they attended all of them, either as a devoted fan of the punk scene itself or as a band member ripping up the stage. After this revelation I had to realize that this year is a center of something really great. Bands formed with the desire to play great music. They tour, host other bands, do interesting home recording sessions. They are active politically and socially. The scene thinks, and people have opinions which they stick into in their acts. Finally, they have fucking great acts. Every show is a big hang out, with the teen-angst in the focus. And the house afterparties are clearly the icing on the cake. These kids created their own scene and they don’t give a fuck about assholes who try to mock them or laugh at them. They don’t need anyone but themselves. Society doesn’t provide them weekend entertainment so they just rot in their rehearsal rooms writing songs in these gifted empty nights.

The quintessence of this scene may be LÖMBIHEAD. On terrible hangover-soaked days I usually wonder if at the show there were about 60 people how the hell can I only remember that 20 specific familiar faces. I first saw Lömbihead at that magical barn fest I mentioned above and I haven’t recognized these kids since they hit the metaphorical stage. After that they disappeared, only to come into view again in the lower end of the night when one of them asked if someone wants to smoke some pot with them. They blended in, they hid in corners or behind bigger room-plants. A couple hours earlier, when they started to play I couldn’t do anything but to surrender and move my head, my body and my whole devotion of punk kids’ bedroom music. They played sloppy but in the good way, when they couldn't care less about anything else but to have fun. Amazing mix of the geeky craziness of Ramones, the witty parts of Fugazi and some visceral Urinals. The latest is the coolest because as it turned out couple months later the band did not know Urinals at all. This post-apocalyptic, nuclear beach party music is one of the finest things that have ever come out of this shithole. The lyrics are as smart as they are obscene and harsh. Their sweet and awkward aura captures me all the time. There’s no show happening on the stage it’s just pure teenage noise music you must listen and see if you have the ability to recognize it. One particular dance has evolved around these kids in which the crowd goes half naked. Looking at this scenario and their bodies gives an idea about the name “Defekt”. Beers in their hands and half naked, young kids hug each other. It’s a magical scene you wouldn’t wanna miss. The formally most unimportant kids in society doing the most important thing on earth: saving their own lives. From boredom, from growing up, from spending a Friday night alone, from pining over rejections.

As it usually goes around in Hungary, there’s no clear reason why this bunch of bands came to existence, all in this specific time. No band sounds like the other and all the kids became friends after they started playing shows together or just found each other by the common coincidence of making something really cool. There were good bands before them. A few but there’s no specific sound bequeathed to this new generation. Maybe hints of some attitude but come on, real punks have their unwritten code of honor since forever. DIY or die. We go everywhere because we wanna play. One band is around for years, starting out in the “non-defect” times, still running and giving us better stuff from show to show. The name is DANCE OR DIE. Finally they have gained their well deserved due – at least here – and they rip. They operate on this late ‘90s, early ‘00s “where do we go from here” gloomy, melodic sound mixed with the “we don’t wanna grow up” desperation which is the teenage angst without an expiration date on it. Some classify them as fast core or crust mixed with some emo, but in the bottom line it’s just fast, and passionate hardcore / punk with three guys screaming and four guys seemingly playing their hearts out on their instruments. The usual criticism of seeing them live is they look sad. Well, the whole continent is sealed with a romanticized sadness which just gets filled with more realism if we go East. Maybe their lovelessness shines through as much from their looks as from their songs, but since when do we wanna turn our heads away if we see something being such real at a punk show? If you wanna have fun then learn their lyrics and sing with them. It’s not that easy to observe other people’s emotional outtakes when you’re singing along and shaking. A couple of weeks ago I saw them with the poorest sound a shady club could offer. That raging, emotionally exhausting noise got turned down and they sounded like a passionate tuneful punk band who does not just write songs that will do the thing but they perform them with a lot of will.

Wandering off from the outskirts and going towards the center of the city that looks like Prague but dirtier (Budapest) we find the residence of FOR MY FRIENDS, a bunch of wild kids, drugged and messed up. They started out from the ashes of NOTHING, a band that finally wanted to play good music and even though they played terribly live… at least it wasn’t shitty music performed even shittier. Falling out from the classical straight up angry kid hardcore, For My Friends rather goes with the beer-flavored bearded pop or melodic punk mixed with a little more anger and geekiness. Although, I doubt these guys had enough time to secrete as many hormones as needed to grow a decent beard. Moreover, they lacked the will for many long months to play their songs properly. I saw them once and it was like Sex Pistols with four Sid Vicious’ on heroin. The ideas behind their music were always cool, but the whole picture looked more like a good draft than an actual act. As it usually goes, time could fix what diligence could have done quicker. The drummer still could enter a “who could beat an egg longer, with full force but without breaking the shell” contest but at least now the music sounds to be more tight. The casual critic, standing right next to me on a recent gig told me: “we rather hear their influences than the song itself”. Even though he was damn right, FOR MY FRIENDS plays a type of music which could capture you, make you bang your head and put a smile on your face. Taking away my personal bias of living the same city, I have no idea how good they could be, but the good thing for me is I don’t have to care about that. If you don’t like them then move here and get used to the mistakes. Trust me, it’s great to see kids swinging in with a beer, some weed and broken hearts, trying to be Budapest’s best dancers. Of course they are far from it but at least they are trying.

Hailing from Salgótarján, here we have Gábor Rádi, former vocalist of SÄW, a guy with two bands and a label which called KIDS LIKE US and still lives in an incubator. One of his music projects is called YOUNG ARSENAL. Inspired by, and sometimes aping, the so-called Kirsch sound they play open chord, raw, noisy but melodic-in-the-emo-way hardcore punk with social/political lyrics and a lot of use of sound collages both at live shows and on record. Well, you rather listen to them on record if you want to hear the real thing because at live shows they play with stockings on their heads (women's nylon, not the bank robber type) which obstruct their view so they don't see the microphones they are supposed to sing in and the mp3 player with which the aforementioned interlude skits should be played from. Even though sometimes they test your nerves and make one query their whole existence, I must be fair because most of the times they do a solid job with delivering fine punk rock. On the other hand, Gábor's other band called FUSEISM is something I haven’t heard before. Their guitarist comes from this island within Budapest called Csepel which is like another universe. It’s residents are chained to the shores, turning into agoraphobics on that tiny land. Especially if we mix punks with the cheapest local beer, enough glue and one of the biggest industrial areas of the country with many abandoned buildings, fine spaces for rehearsal rooms, raves or simply vanishing from society. This guy cut his bonds. He didn’t burn any bridges but delivers the best guitar parts since I could even remember. I read that revolution summer – or maybe just Guy Picciotto’s guitar parts in Rites Of Spring – were hugely influenced by the guitar play of Rikk Agnew. That is what FUSEISM reeks of too. Dreamy, rev. summer guitar rage pushed through the echoes of the surf sound and a little bit of the taste of the guitar overdose given by nowadays Fucked Up. It is delivered with a cold handed rhythm section and consciously weak vocals, like the singer doesn’t even try to sound enjoyable or simply doesn't care at all. FUSEISM dwells on ground that could capture the attention of lame hipsters as well but they have the attitude and credo that can convince punks that all the fancy assholes at the shows are there by mistake. This band is the real deal.

Going west into Veszprém County we get the hotbed of new punk in Hungary. The two epitomes of the scene are PFA and PLAN BEER, a group of friends and tour mates. PFA is formed by four ultimate nasty kids. As news says, now they are backed up by a keyboard player, but no one had the luck to see this formation so far I’m writing these lines. These fucked up little prodigies are killing it every time, everywhere. They play thrashy punk hardcore with sweaty, mutilated one-finger solos. Pace is changing like a rollercoaster of a mood of a drunken person, balancing on the edge of passing out and endless raving. Their short, to-the-point lyrics are like drunken revelations and epiphanies of modern society and of punk itself, murmured at the lower ends of house parties on a couch with vomit stains. Every word have this awakening stink of belching. They need to be digested a bit but all in all they are thoughtful, funny, ironic and most of all true. Like a book consisting of nothing but perfect one-liners one after another. PFA would be excellent music to drop acid to and watch weird movies played backwards, or just wonder about these kinda things. It’s not the sound of terror. It’s the sound of taking weird drugs what make you more punk not a smiling puppy who accepts everything what the world offers.

PLAN BEER, on the other hand, walks along the classical path of punk, playing nothing but fast and smart music filled with the anger of youth. They use more melodies, with singalong parts and mid-tempos, injecting a darkish, atmospheric tone to the whole sound - a kind which totally resonates with the desperation that makes punk music awesome. They sound as punk should have sounded after the glorious days of the 80s, not as punk had been fucked up in the medieval decade of the 90s - speaking of course within the map lines of Hungary. There is nothing progressive in their sound but the timelessness of their songs are truly about the present. Luckily we live and listen to everything in the present so it can stick with us until we becomes the past. They play their guitars and shout their lyrics in a way that offers something to think about and most of the times they nail it with the slight chance of fucking it up which makes their music more interesting. This last sentence is quite true for all the previous band descriptions included in this report. If you’re looking for punk rock in its raw beauty, without any added polish or adjectives, here you are.

The last band that comes to my mind when thinking of something awesomely wrong is MIND YOUR STEP. Hailing from the area of Győr, they play furious punk / hardcore what reminds you to early Agnostic Front, SSD or slower fastcore bands like Youth Attack fame. Well, their point is to play fast and noisy. The first time I heard them I didn’t see them cause I was handling the door the a show. They did a Minor Threat song which sounded sloppy through the door between me and the stage. My friend came to me and told me that they should rather cover Void, because even if they fuck it up it is still Void, or rather it is even more Void. This is kind of what you get from them. A chase for staying in time that sometimes leads into chaotic noise but it still is good and entertaining even when it falls apart, like a tightrope walker who falls, only with punk if you fall you won’t get hurt. That is the best show everyone wants to see. And it’s not even sympathy towards them. They are great in the punk way and punk way is the best way.

So this is the “Defekt Scene”. Mostly. I’m sure where there is punk there are also kids who are exactly the same. And if you don’t see magic in them I’m sorry but you should rather go with radio rock. Young and snotty kids stick together, throwing guerilla house parties or rehearsal room shows, forming new bands, writing fanzines. All in all, they make their shit happen. Of course there are more Hungarian bands. What you’ve read about is just a tiny piece of it. Some groups are even better for my taste than any of these bands above, but this scene captures something significant that is happening now here, in a scene that usually always looked down on newcomers and weirdos, with a government fucking everyone’s lives up. Now punk music and punks in barns and bedrooms seem to have restored what it’s about. A cool, nasty, weird, nerdy but honest secret. And big one.

most of the bands' records are up here: http://heart-a-tact.blogspot.com/