#381

Personal punk report for this month. Things are alright. I’m still a punk because punk is still something real close to what I am. For more details continue reading.
It is fun to launch my mind on a late afternoon cruise among punk sounds, ideas and the result of how some ideas sound. Rakta played here a transcendental set, flavored with burning out smoke sticks and lots of reverb. Their sound was more of an idea than a recipe for manufacturing music. I really don’t like and neither believe when bands pretended that the music what they do is totally coincidental. If you like music you can and should know how your band sounds, at least you should tell how you wanted it to sound. It doesn’t mean that your music is not visceral. Preplanning not always ends up in being pretentious. I say this but Rakta makes music in unique and dreamy way that is more than an idea that could be scripted so easily. Their set was great and the whole event was filled with good vibes. Except for assholes who wanted to or successfully did sneak in at the door. Way to make a scene stop running, fucking posers.
This month the rambling continues because I realized that this is a punk fanzine in which my task is to write about the punk I experience and probably/hopefully this is what people are expecting from me to do. I started getting hooked on a Hungarian writer who says great things are more than what was put into them. Meaning a sentence is more than just an order of letters and a story is more than a structure of sentences. Just like punk music is so much more than amateurishly executed songs from frustrated kids to frustrated kids. It’s us and the way how we cope with reality.

It’s December and that really embarrassing period of the year starts again when I have to go through the whole year’s releases, searching more focused for non-usa/japan/spain/Scandinavia bands. Why? Because I believe that every year all the time amazing punk is happening and I wanna hear it, I don’t wanna lock myself out of it even if I had tons of fun this year with spending endless hours on listening to yugoslavian hardcore, italian raging filth punx and french ultra violent amphetamine-core. It’s still true that those bands are slightly better because they did not give a damn about making it, about being included in anyone’s YETT in MRR or being put on any blogs that is the channel of hype in the basement world. They were free, being cut loose and this is what I miss from most of the bands today. Contemporary punk is good, great, giving me what I want but today most of my browsing was spent on staring at pictures of skinheads posing on the front covers of hardcore records. I remember I said Oi! is great, stomping is fun but this is the end of the year when I have to focus on what was the best, greatest thing this year. Hardcore is more than music, it is communication, even if it’s dumb as fuck it has to say something unique, individual and interesting to me. Even in the most aggressive, catatonic noise there should be a levitating power that makes me feel as great as if I were encountering something utterly beautiful. But there is nothing in perfectly reproducing a recipe. In perfection there is no humanity, only mistakes are personal and punk is really personal because it’s based on glorifying mistakes. I want to hear the best mistakes because fuck you, punk is fucking sick and it’s the best entertainment.

People around me say I make too much noise. My ex roommate usually laughed on me while I was playing a record, listening to something on my laptop, watching a youtube video and playing on my guitar all at the same time. More than anything this is an experiment. It’s being stoned at a weekday night laying alone in my bed and getting hooked again on hardcore. Starting from Underdog and ending up at the Skullflowers, watching countries, eras, sounds blend together, missing something all the time, always wanting more. I want everything from 2014.
One long sentence: Probably one of the best records this year is White Wards – Cigarette Burns, the name of the lp, the art, the sounds, all those little pieces coming together gently for making something aggressively disgusting, power house of universal noise, noise that is from everywhere while it is not deconstruction of sounds that are reconstructed in one band but all those feelings what triggered great scenes, sounds are present here as well. There are joints within Die Kreuzen and Mars and through these a hungry mind could travel really far. So good how here evidential parts are beyond the music and only the possibility exists because White Wards always uses some other ways to maintain this confusion. What made bands like Cold Sweat brilliant lives on in White Wards it’s the combination of confident, maniac pace that wildly flows into familiar disturbance let it be anything that is a ragtag company of deviated sounds. It’s total hardcore.
Another band that is total, meaning they pick their sounds from the full spectrum of music is Total Control. The more I listen to their second LP the deeper I’m sinking among the many layers of their music, and sometimes I start to wonder why it is called punk music, while there is no other definition that could fit their music better. It’s everything, it’s so full of ideas while the songs have a sort of simple form, but they sound as the band have listened to everything and from that experience they have created this. This peaks out from music while music backs it up, lifts it up to rise and shine. They merge feelings, they can do whatever they want it’s just perfect. They are silent about many things this is why this record carries a literature component as well because to write a novel is to be silent about many things, and while Total Control could be anything they have chosen to be just a perfect form, which is detailed, thought out and sort of controlled but within this overlooked platform they seem to have enough freedom from bright creativity.
There was Ivy there was Good Throb, guitar sounds that were flinging around in my brain all year merging cool filth from all over the basement universe, demonstrating the wonders of using that punk kick when both bands’ music is coming from a fragile nest and from this they build up a brave, reckless, cynical structure of notes. The careless execution of perfect punk is so vivid and unstoppable on these records that it makes me want to roll around in filth. I loved the confident, solid strength in Good Throbs music that thought that they were so sure about their voice which divides into the gut punching angst that is gathered up in a form of pure bile thanks to the nauseating side effects of living in today’s society and how the music is magically falling apart everywhere all the time. This state of tearing apart the noise makes their music be able to fit any state of mind, time of the day, or taste. It’s hardcore, sure, but then there is the elevating chorus of Psycho Disco that is some end state of guitar playing perfection for a punk, for broken ears and exhausted minds. It’s brilliant and fun, fun, fun. Just like Ivy with gathering together many bright minds to create this cultish band, no V is replacing any U, by cult I mean as a reflection of America’s craziness that was once perfectly captured by Saccharine Trust. They too sound as a sewer gang would got together to paint a sonic portrait of everything let it be everyday impotent or lurking around psychopaths, lurching serial killers, their operation is like scripting an underground pamphlet read by everyone since it reports the malformed reality. Their guitars are like a guitar robe which is slinging on the body priest on psychedelic drugs performing a black celebration. Helicopters above our heads, bugs in our phones, Ivy is living, it’s forming, it bursts out. They bring back the real filth of New York when hardcore was dangerous even when it was played by slim nerds.          
The sad thing is you have all known this already. There’s got to be bands all around the world just as good as the ones above. Not better, more real or anything but just as good.
For example local Hungarian high school kids choose to spend a fraction of their free time in rehearsal rooms rather than just hang out. They have recorded and put out a kick ass demo. They are called Youth Sucks and they rip. If Hungarian kids are capable to create raging, fractured, loud, distorted music everyone else could. It isn’t banned in any country to learn some notes on guitar, listen to music through the internet or anything. At some countries it is but I guess most of MRR readers are in a luckier position. Yes the infrastructure is not always accessible but Nervous Breakdown was recorded through an amp that did not need distortion because it was already there. And since there is no excuse for bands to be not good there shouldn’t be excuse for those who write history to cover the stories of every band everywhere. There is no scientific reason why is some countries are better in producing music than other ones it’s just those scenes got the cover. This makes other countries want the cover for themselves too badly they start to reproduce the hyped sounds. This leads into some terrible shit if you are not from Japan. Then it will be the best, next level, another universe mutant sound, But Japan is just a little island so far away from almost anything. Still they were able to gain fame. We know everything that is written by someone else, we use channels, scientists, report. MRR is one of them and the bizarre thing is that even I know lesser about the whole punk universe than anyone else who lives in SF and could hang at the compound, browse through the archive anytime they want. Thus the responsibility is on all of us who have this surface and this is why I’m having half fun half work to go through this years punk. While doing that I should say that I got two killer released in Berlin from this really nice guy called Asaf. One is his release called VVhile from either/or/both Serbia/Macedonia. They mix together shoegaze dreaminess with late era Dischord post everything. If I remember right they have some kind of connection to Bernay’s Propaganda who I say last year and played an amazing set of mutant disco punk. It’s not just quality music but the cover art is sick too. A bit too tidy for my filth loving ear but after all it’s original and fun.
The other material I got is his band called Shifka Chiefs, hailing from Israel. It’s knife sharp guitars mixed together with intentional dumbness and lots of pure energy. It’s nerdy garage music focused more on being creative in playing the guitar than in mixing drugs and booze in yourself. Again I’m with the falling apart sounds so if everybody says you should tune in your guitar please record your set and send it to me one way or another. As it happened today when a band called American Hate messaged me because they want to play here. They are from Oklahoma and play the classic total craziness of the mid-west, locked out-locked in acid drinking bad vision fest. Guitars are going off crazy, drums are unstoppable, the singer chants like a fucking maniac, they cover a Devo song, there is feedback, this could fit into a genre but would stand out from there, because there is something else to their sound, maybe it’s a calm state to know they won’t be recognized thus they could blow out their sound anyway they want it, this feels like sweating for nothing, going to sleep while hungry or wanting to barf after overeating yourself. It’s too less and too much, and I have never ever heard of this fucking band. Now use your fucking fingers and write me about the best nightmares guitar pop bands from Italy, about total hardcore attack from Latvian about anything from anywhere.

#380

When this establishment of building a paper tower about punk higher and higher every month has to change, I hope it will be transformed into a television show. Television addict. Television sect. TV casualty. Tv Party. How do you show music? The actual sound not people playing it. What can be shown, cannot be said. That’s what Wittgenstein said. But what about that can be heard? How do you describe it? This is what i try to do every month with sweating out descriptions and details of feelings that i got while i was observing noise with my ears. I’m also stacking this paper tower higher and higher.
How do you show music? Could it be televised? Sounds evoke visions, they do for sure, but what to do with sounds that couldn’t be shown or doesn’t connect to the right scene?
Paper is freedom, that’s why I’m lucky, everything could be transcribed on it. It only depends on the writer.
Television is something else. If a photo is truth then cinema is truth twenty-four times per second, we knew it because Godard has told us. What we weren’t prepared then was Television. TV is transmitting cinema 24 hours per 365 days a year. That is awful lot of truth. While a photo is taken forever because it captures truth, television is just running off, like strangers on the opposite way of an escalator, it generously spends seconds without a shrug on the shoulder, in television everybody is a star with a twisted meaning that is - what you see is already gone. Still we think it’s everything. Nothing had more impact on us but television, through television history has become our present and when it become our present we started to mistake reality with the selected broadcasts that featured on the screen. That’s why some of us keen to have television in three dimension even if that’s just life with a camera included in the room.
Television was a great indicator of people losing their edge. When a band appeared on the TV it meant they have kick up the unwritten contract of underground brotherhood. If you were in television you were someone, while the agreement was in punk that everybody is nobody thus basically everybody is somebody. In TV when a pictures of you was shown even for a fraction of a second that meant everybody saw you because we, the people were watching everything that has happened on the screen. But we were watching you and you didn’t even see us and this made you better than us. That’s not what we have agreed on. For someone like me who comes from among the ashes of a collapsed soviet state it’s not new. When in the past everyone was equal but some of us were more equal. This is television, it’s corrupted socialism.
Television had become our neon bible written by producers who used mechanical techniques to satisfy all our needs, to answer all our questions, to tell us how the world works. These modern apostles made prophets of everyone who happened to stumble into the spotlight where they had fifteen minutes span of fame to die for our sins and redeem our souls.
Then came cable televisions who have changed the game forever. They were the Calvinists who set up a colorful counter religion that opposed the monochrome hegemony. It felt like a kiss. As the idea of a fanzine, a half serious situation taken deadly serious by it’s doers. This freedom of self expression set on the same idea of which we are being jaded by today. That everyone could be on the screen and everything will be relevant. But after all the only thing that has become relevant is to get on the screen in one way or another. Nobel wars are fought so everybody has a word to say, a vision to create, an audience to reach. This was the crusade of cable channels. It’s good, it is how things should be and what is more clearer than the fact since television has disappeared from our daily routine, the channel not the function, everybody speaks for themselves and nothing matters anymore. All of us have our platform, our screen but instead of telling our truth we just puke into each others mouth in the middle of an always ongoing religious war with disco lights vibrating and some cheesy music trying to sell the whole scene as romantic realism. You should ask is it the man or is it the channel? It’s always the man and we must be shameful to see how we don’t give a fuck unless a band plays in front of a disgusting grey wall in between two artificial ferns. For some reasons when a band is taken out of it’s natural environment aka a show in a basement the game becomes more serious. Well mostly for us who are lazy, fat and too comfy. No surprise why I maintain a weird obsession with punx in cable television shows. 
The young and restless still get their kicks from the real things. I spent a good amount of time marveling on a live footage of Glue playing in a basement where fellow MRR contributor Al Quint is jammed up in the first row and he is being so enthusiastic about what he is a part of, i couldn’t do anything else but stare on his unstoppable love for punk. On the way how he moves, how he observes and blends together with this fullness of teenage angst. It’s perfect, it’s touching, it’s reality but captured thus it’s more real. It’s you and me. And of course Al. It’s mostly Al but it’s a reflection too, the same one everyone has when they hear something that is reaching further than listening to a genre, dressing in a way or be able to push people in a basement. This is it, the point, feeling great, cause what the fuck else do you want from life?



Me? I’m fine. I am being enthusiastic on that bizarre scene when Siege performing their hearts and guts out in a blindingly bright, huge white room that has electricity and an american flag in itself. They play for infinity for an unseen but imagined crowed. They want themselves to be recorded in their best possible form. All that screaming, the falling and crawling on the ground, the power, that raw mutant energy is captured in this one terrific performance. As if they knew when you could shine for fifteen perfect minutes you can shine forever. The chase of catching up with themselves and the success of even though they couldn’t keep up with their own self-dictated speed they still are amazingly good. A voice from a known but further place, inhuman screaming because it’s too human, what is? - to live and be confused. It is fragile still it’s boldly tries to conquer the world. It gathers audience for itself. They don’t seem to care about it if it’s too bizarre, they are playing and the rest is history. This makes sense because a show in front of a camera is more relevant just like every show someone writes a review about. This is television and cameras are expensive. No one could fuck up the scene.



Top World? When Jesus and Mary Chain are yelling that they wanna die, they wanna die and all the kids are dancing like it’s another bubblegum pop song. The beat is right, the lyrics are only spent on entertainment. There’s no disturbance. No one gets it, it’s a picture, it should look cool, the rest is for the rest.



There is Huggy Bear as a driving force of showing they are really at the top of their game. A flashing, vibrating vision of power, fashion that is in the hands of the people, dictated by the youth, noise, some sense, a lot of sense, anger against oppression that until than was obvious for a society that’s classes has been distributed by assholes. It’s a dance party, a revolutionary one, a message sent out to everyone who is afraid of us. It’s an offense. But who gets offended they deserve it.



Somewhere else Die Kreuzen is defending punk for a tv host, teenager girl then playing out their Midwest teenage boredom, amazing and super awkward freak hardcore. It feels like a fault inside a system and at the same time it’s great that even in this environment this music could function and show to kids like you and me that adolescent noise is important. The manic apathy that wraps around their set is terrific, the way they are aware of that this music is brilliant and still they hesitate with destroying the whole world with it. It’s their secret, for them on that footage there’s no audience so they can reveal everything. Music like this is for the depths of lonesome weekend nights spent with pasting together fanzines, for being alright with your own self, for awkward raging.



Agnostic Front was making fun of a cable show with switching instruments, faking notes, revealing their true self of being just a bunch of idiot kids who by mistake made some very good hardcore music when they were super young. It’s funny because it’s true and funny because for once they laugh as well. It’s a good evidence of everyone was young and innocent. For me it’s a mirror in what i can see society. How something innocent got spoiled and became total cop hardcore.


Agnostic Front - 1986 Cable Access show by riton23

No Trend presenting in a nauseating scene the truth about Teenage Love as if they were left alone in an empty space but they are fine with it. It’s funny, brutal, i can dance to it, you can be frightened by it.



Just like how Flipper set themselves on loose and proved they don’t give a damn if they are disturbing as many minds as they can. Flipper understood the monotonic power of the television. That if you ever happen to be on screen then no one will make you leave before you finish what you want to say. They pushed all their brain hammering songs on an unprepared and unaware audience. If you are lucky and have a soft mind then this mechanic drilling won’t damage it, it will just give you a rough massage. Videodrome.



Lost Kids playing Cola Freaks and everybody is happy. Some danish avant-gardism, painted faces, moving melodies, harsh guitars. An abandoned disco is taken over by freaks who get high on Cola.



Blitz playing New Age on amphetamine, convincing enough so that bitter after taste of european speed appears at the back of your mouth, the drummer is standing, there isn’t any chair for him, the singer is chewing his inner wall of his cheek. The smack kicked in. They find every of the interviewers questions offensive. It’s again something that has went wrong, a reporter’s life is being threaten by speed skinheads who aggressively force amazing melodies into their really dumb music. Burgess nightmare transforms into reality, the generation that was crammed into the land of block of flats has came out, here’s your abandoned baby Maggie.



Even that is pure gold when Thin Lizzy’s performing some christmas carol with the Sex Pistols. As the drummer of the ’Pistols is trying to hit a soap bubbles with his sticks instead of his kit. It’s another knife in the back of punk, so what we are already zombies, still nota s bad as a butter commercial.

Stalin performing for a huge audience that is sitting, teenage girls are trying to catch up and clap in rhythm. They fail but nice of them to try. The show seems like as the Fabulous Stains were reality. Even the make-up fits. There is something weird in presenting this mess to a tamed crowd. Is this art? They don’t get it still they accept it? Should it be shown? Too many questions. 

There’s even a black and white, but beautify filmed sketch documentary on japanese bands performing. My favorite is SS playing Mr. Twist. In every endings of all their limbs there is concentration, lust and hunger for more. As if this was a religion. It’s hardcore with surf guitars, weird punk with serious agro fun. It’s noisy, weird music in which Japan was always one of the best but SS executes its songs with a detailed care, it makes sure there isn’t a second when tension goes away. Perfection.



There is more. Beat Happening performing Black Candy



Suburban Reptiles - Saturday Night Stay At Home



Suburban Laws - Janitor



Unit 3 with Venus - Beer

Mercenárias - Polícia

Sarlo Akrobat



CCCP



and more and more and more. What is no more is television itself. It’s dead. Just as how some people think punk is. Well folks, we outlived MTV. Jello, I hope you are happy now.

Interview

This is an interview with me that is included in Stephanie's (Hysterics) tour diary. I was an asshole to her and kept editing my answers even after it was long printed and sold out. Sorry.

My interview with Hysterics will be in the next issue of MRR.

1)  When and how did you start doing shows in Budapest?

Wow, I looked it up and the first show I booked was in 2007 for a german band called Short Fuse. Back then I was doing one show per year. I didn’t want to spend too much of my parents money on barely attended punk shows. Everything changed when the dude who booked all the sick shows here moved away to live in Canada. Then with another guy we took over the duty of keeping Budapest on the map. The worst part is to deal with the sound guy. Fuck them. I also hate to call strangers on the phone and to depend on other people like club owners, junkie band members, etc. The best part is I can watch some of my favorite bands while they are sleeping around my flat.

2) Favorite Hungarian bands of the last few years?

Rákosi is pretty sick. I like this band called Gross Out they play super violent and groovy sxe hardcore. Youth Violence is raging. I like Piss Crystals because they are my unwanted lil brothers but they fit well my stoned states. Padkarosda has an amazing sound although live they always play a bit too much. Don’t know, one of the reasons I’m in bands is because I don’t find other people play what I want to hear.

3) Why do you think some bands choose to sing in English not Hungarian? What are the advantages/disadvantages to this...is there a difference in crowd reaction?

I have a theory. It used to be when you finally received a record you had to spend time with it. Even if you didn’t like it first, because your channels for learning about new music were limited you were forced to be locked together with a band. In this dependent state it was essential to fully understand the music and enjoy all of its layers. You wanted to learn the lyrics because you thought the absolute of being a fan was to see the band play live and then it was important more than anything to finally have your chance to sing along because this would have been the last element to make the overall connection. Which is: at the same time, singing the same thing, feeling the same. In this process using a mutual code (language of the lyrics) is essential. We who started getting into punk in the pre-file sharing days still think like this, for example I still always read lyrics on bandcamp. But it isn’t only fans who want to make a connection.
As for Hungary it is a small country and there is no language like this anywhere else. All our neighbors could understand some of each other but we are left alone in this Babelian crossroad.  We could only be connected with each other but everybody here hates everybody else while everybody keeps a constant dream of conquering the whole outside world from their little, depressing bedrooms.
In the ‘80s bands who were able to do that, used English only when they wanted to pass censorship of communism. But no one talked English until the end of the ‘00s so every band was singing in Hungarian. Then everybody started singing in English because they thought that is the only way they can make a connection, in other meaning to tour or be recognized. Because they thought no one would listen to a band that uses a secret language they rather used a communal code and it was English language. Also because punx are usually dumb and boring; they tend to think their lyrics sound a bit better in a different language. But since the internet and blogs and all this, listening to music is no longer a secret or an intimate relation with a few very special bands. We no longer spend time with bands, we are rushing through discographies and everybody is in hurry to listen to more music and be the first to know and report about new/newly discovered groups/sounds. Thus we don’t care about the layers of music, about lyrics, about anything anymore and thanks to this oversupply of every band in every genre; dumb and boring punx switched back to Hungarian cause this way it won’t turn out that what they are singing about is bullshit because even if it wasn’t, no one would care either. Also it's less likely for a hungarian to sing along in english with another hungarian. That's a bit pretentious.
I had a lot if inner struggle with deciding which is better to write in hungarian or in english. After my first band I do both. Just as many bands are mixing language in their discography. Just like how Beckett wrote books in French. Unlike how Joseph Conrad and Nabokov wrote books only in English. I like to believe what matters is what you put into your creations. I love books and I usually feel weird when I read translations. Because those books are written by other people not the original author. How do you know if the original author would choose the same exact combination of words in a different language? Still there is a core of the book that will be never lost in translation. This is why I think that even if you use another language if you have something real to say it will come through.
I also like the idea how Japanese bands use English language. Most of them can’t speak English at all still they write their lyrics in English. Just like us who can’t play our instruments but still we are playing music. This makes the voice and the lyrics as well just like an instrument, like the drums.
Is it the end of the content of hardcore punk? I don’t think so. We only lost the time to digest content, but the content is still there. I have written an essay about hardcore being just music but music is a form of communication. Noise is a form just like a letter from the ABC but people behind the noise fills the form with content. If I were unable to understand English I would still get Void and I have to say the way You act on stage is more radical to me than any of the lyrics of any Crimethinc band has ever written.

4) What's your day job?

I work for a company that parallel distributes medicine. We buy medicine that is useless in one country, relabel it and sell it cheaper than the actual price in another country. Not even a year ago I was hired for six months to print out labels. Now I’m the deputy manager of the regulatory department. I have to get shit done which is basically the same thing what I do with bands and booking shows. But it’s much easier to work with my colleagues than with unmotivated, drunk, high punx.  They have no idea about my real life, I lie when they ask about my band shirts, I tell them I just got them in a thrift store.

5) What bands have you been in?

I joined my first band when I was 16. It was called Something Against You. I was the youngest and other members came from bands I have idolized. I have learnt everything from this band. I was also in Ninpulators and Szextank. Now I play in Norms, Diskobra and Zen Fascists. I also wanna start a band where  I write all the music and lyrics. I want it to sound like listening to Oi music while having a bad trip. And lots of romanticism.

6) What do your parents think of you being punk?

My folks are weirdos. When I was young they always took me to nude beaches and camps. I spent my childhood being frightened by the naked bodies of elder, chubby german women. My dad is always disappointed in me because his idea of punk is Sid Vicious in his glory days multiplied by ten. He is a weird man and even though he never says nice things he always buys merch from my bands which is super weird but probably nice too. My mom is cool. She is my role model and she was always supportive in anything I have done. She let me go to different countries when I was 15 to see NOFX. I never lied to her instead I just always kept my word. This way she thought me how to be reliable and free. The only thing she doesn’t like is that I scream. She says it’s not good for my health. They came to my first band’s reunion show. It was touching, a packed room with 200 people, everybody singing along. Right after the show I went straight to them and told my mother without her this all could have never happened. But she has no idea she gave birth to the last hungarian punk.

What you do shouldn't be a secret for me

Yo, december is next week and i've already got assigned to write my YETT for MRR. BUT I don't live there and I never receive amazing tapes/records/cds from all over the world, as for current bands I mostly/only know about the ones from the hip countries, those who are hyped on blogs, bla bla. All the non-usa/spanish/japan/scandinavia bands i like and know are from decades ago. I believe there is more and i want more, i wanna hear about your fucking scene/bands/noise. At least send me stupid links, i don't trust post offices around the end of the year. YES, if you are great i'll write about you in the punk bible! Please!

#379

I have a friend here visiting from SF whom I won’t name. He is really secretive. He used to be in charge of editing the MRR book review section but the moment he stopped to do it he started this struggled to get his name out of the list of contributors and shitworkers. The reason why I like spending time with him is that we can have all these serious, nerdy, embarrassing, awkward conversations about punk. International punk conference is on!

            We sit around and talk about every aspect of punk—joking, naming bands, discussing ideas and approaches and attitudes in punk, sounds, and the way people relate to music—basically everything connected to this world that is held together by band patches. As we get older, it becomes much more fun, because many times if I stop for a second and try to envision myself from the inside, I can do nothing but laugh. Because, after all, like, who gives a fuck? What we do should be secret, otherwise we will be “thrown into the loony bin” for being obsessed with such a lame topic. But having him around is great, especially in these times when everything in my life is great except for punk.

            Not my punk, because it’s stronger than ever. I do feel like I’m the last punk, or the last one I know for sure. But it’s strange how not so long ago I thought the only thing I was good at was doing my punk and now I’m having success in normal, boring life, with promotions and my company’s trust and an increasing salary and a perfect relationship, while I suffered through this year with bands, promoters, clubs, crowds, band members, my own laziness. The other night, we played a show and I had a nervous breakdown in a car (I sounded like Meat Puppets’ In a Car). If my girlfriend Anna hadn’t been there with me to take control and save my ass, some serious shit would have happened. In the end, everything went alright but I’m just done giving blood, sweat, and tears for this thankless job where everybody feels fine and free except me. That’s the only thing that matters for me now—I wanna keep my punk as fun as it can be, not a duty I have to serve. Right now I feel like I’m forced into the role of a fool and I’m blamed for everything no matter what I do.

            My strategy to survive this is not to fade away or give in and go mainstream (= grow up, get fucked). I’m gonna grow a thick skin. My idea is to go more radical in order to be able to play on my own terms. I’m done being that guy who has to be the only one who solves all the bullshit that could spoil us all at any given time. I’m done with it. To live is to be confused, and try to fight against it, but I do want the privilege to be confused a bit too.

            Alright, whining stops here.

            Basically, I’m about to establish my one-man secret society. I do other projects with people but I like my punk these days as I shelter my brain and my hours with noise and nerdy punk thoughts, rather than caring about any of the bullshit others create. I wanna fill every one of my hours with good things. It’s not some new age hippie bullshit but I don’t have time for things that bother me, do something different or shut up. Enough talking about myself. It’s not a diary; it should be a diarrhea of amazing sounds.

            I still get goosebumps when I blast No Trend while heading to work. That band is just another level of evil awesomeness. Their guitars, the powerhouse restrained grooves, that cynical voice of the singer. Of course pre “we are artists” era. Somehow they sucked at doing that. Not sure why, but America is kind of failing at progressing their ideas. As in, they suck in fabricating World Peace and Freedom version #2, they are also bad when bands like Die Kreuzen and Saccharine Trust figure out they should do something more and go far out into experimenting.

            Ruidosa Inmundicia live three hours from my town and it was such a bummer that they had never played here before. They finally did and we had an eventful weekend with them, which was mostly saved by their cool spirit, constant party mode, and the way I was able to get into my meditative state when I shook my head to their crushing sets. Busy minds look around and organize to arise.

            I started buying records on instinct and it does not disappoint. Spinning my newly arrived Shoes This High LP is something like next-level punk heaven. They sound evil and noisy and this totally calms me. New Zealand was already good at creating sounds that are hard to pin on an exact emotion but unlike the dreamy sounds, this band brings on the nightmare chills.

            Speaking of nightmarish sounds, I just received my Fottutissima Pellicceria Elsa LP, a band that follows no rules. Creativity in total chaos, they make space for guitars to play out whatever they want and these mutant jam sessions placed into raging punk songs are amazing. It’s always the best when anger opens a platform for creativity. The live recordings gave an extra flavor to this on the loose sounds, so many layers melting into each other. All in all, it’s just a heartfelt record driven by enthusiasm and not giving a fuck at all. So good. They remind me of United Mutation, in a way. A band that is constant in my life—their sound is something I have to give time to every month, sitting down and rediscovering what was hidden in the complex form. Even their band photos contain this mystical magic of mutant minds—there is something else there that is more than life. It feels as if they have figured out what punk should be, then they made it and disappeared. Their cover art, lyrics and everything are just unbelievable.

            This approach to punk is a total component of the Vixens LP. Girls from nowhereland playing Void-worship blaspheme punk with a cover and package art that blows my mind. Hope they are still a band, and if not, I hope they are working on new projects with the same quality. This is why I love Hysterics, too. One of the few contemporary bands that doesn’t follow the codes and rules that are mistakenly thought to dictate some territories of hardcore punk. I have been sitting on an interview with them for an embarrassingly long time now, but I loved it when they told me how they didn’t know the whole history of hardcore punk and that they just simply started playing this amazing blasting music. ’Cause after all, this subculture is for the freaks who would rather have visions and ideas than a codex written in stone. Stones are good for throwing at cops, but you should write to fanzines punx!

            Ladies are winning me over this month with their extravagant sounds. I got Sida’s 7”. No idea about this band but they are probably from Spain or Japan. The record sleeve tells me no info on this (or I wasn’t looking closely enough). They play repetitive, feverish paranoid music, something that could be Kim Gordon’s revenge on the world; all amps switched on, tuned into the wrong level and just played out at maximum level. Bad trips, evil vibrations, burn your surfboards because even the desert of your mind gets freezing cold at night and you need that extra heat.

            For real, everyone out there, do yourself a favor and spend your useless nights in front of your computers checking out new bands. You’ll realize punk is this bottomless pool of universal anger and creativity. Just because everyone is bored, talking about cool bands or too clueless to know what is the best shit, there are millions of bands whose existence is forgotten, even by their ex-members, who deserve your attention. The more music you listen to the more you will learn about music, and music is a form of communication so music is basically people.

            Ideas.

            I could still spend hours thinking about the idea that our society is fucked because we watch each other too much, thus we are afraid to express our true selves because of the fear of failure. On the other hand, in punk everybody is purposely making mistakes, which will later be recorded, archived, consumed, adored, and collected. This is why punk is the best.

            There was this old punk guy who said you should start to learn to live for the inside. He might have been right, because those who only care about public stunts are empty as fuck. I can appreciate the results of listening to shitloads of music and reading lots of books and keeping these things for myself. It’s not as if I envy my own perfect taste (which is basically developed after reading who says what in this magazine); it’s that to get into things and not give a fuck about other people’s ideas could benefit you. If you build up your own little world, the outside will never tear you down or let you feel embarrassed or awkward. It’s like the Zouo 7”. That thing should never have existed at all, because it makes no sense, as to what the meaning was before they released that 7” in question and yet still there is such a document and it’s just another perfect example of all the marvels this world can produce.

            One night, I had a conversation about the age before everyone was able to learn about anything in seconds and how people then were forced to listen to bands who are now considered ridiculously mediocre, washed out bullshit, but who then sounded interesting because no one knew where they were gaining influence from. One could feel now that one has wasted months or years of one’s life on things that are now laughed at by the youngsters. But for me this is another great thing in punk, because this scene is full with fallen idols. Because it proves that nostalgia is only a great excuse for bad taste and laziness. It’s not about getting stuck in the past but about always learning new things and picking out the best. There were great bands who either broke up early, or turned into total shit, and there were times when we were just listening to terrible music and luckily we have grown out of it. The present is now and if you feel embarrassed by your past that means you are smarter now.

            Also we tend to think that some countries and eras were unable to produce amazing punk bands but for fuck’s sake just do what I have told you: sit on your ass and learn about the nonstop coolness of punk if you are a devoted fan. Most likely the harder times with their obscure bands are much more interesting, because they give you that extra flavor of secret society, with their efforts to go against the grain. That’s a bit self-indulgent, but come on, there has to be some pleasure even for us.

            There is a thing I hate. Hipsters are gone. I thought they were idiots because, for some reason, they felt like they had to adopt everything that seemed cool, and because they were unable to relate to anything but the coolness, they used irony and cynicism to blend in. I hate it when people like a band because that band looked or acted strange. It’s their music that’s supposed to dominate, not the other bullshit. The Clean looked like total office workers and Hoax proved to be more than just a bleeding forehead.

            It’s pretty tiring that, while I think I’m the lamest person, at the same time people around me force me to feel that what’s happening in my surroundings is hip. It is the best thing ever for sure, but it is only so because we know what the worst thing ever is: normal life. What is more normal than to base a subculture on the chase of doing cool things, on worshipping a format over content? I don’t like when these normal life things get mixed with my world.

            But the fun is over, hipsters have grown up and they have become self-proclaimed experts. Everybody is raving about how much they know about everything and how perfect their taste is and they try to see even listening to music as just a set of rules that could be mastered. While again I feel embarrassed and awkward for not saying more, and while their life is just this constant self indulgence, mine is working at feeling like shit less. It’s that “I know the more I learn the less I know” thing. But at least I know that I’m real and that feels good for sure.

#377

This method will make it hard to keep up with what is discussed within these upcoming lines of thoughts transformed into words, but history will treat it right.
So, two months ago in MRR Ratcharge raised an interesting question. Why is the punk punk? Why do we say that he is a punk; why does it need you to be fully committed to listening to non-musical pop music?

            I’m the least qualified person to go into the history of words and phrases. But the fact is not the simple reasoning of saying that punks came before them and that punk music made a perfect match. Punk is the origo of the music and its accompanying cultural world, thus it carries a significant impact on our whole life. Everything was leading into the way of creating this sound and aesthetics; and sometimes it seems as if culture fights with all its power to go back into this fundamental epicentrum of everything. But to swim against the currents is not always easy.

            But punk music is played by punks for punks. It’s not like progressive rock, that is played by assholes and listened by dads in leather vests and ponytail hair. Punk is like girls; this is why girls are punks. There were girls before girl bands, and it’s such a huge thing for some: that the better half of humanity is capable of making noise, and out of shock everyone calls these bands “girl-bands” and their members “girls.”

            These are just words. But words have power. I’m pretty sure I could quote some hip hop artists here, but I only prefer rap songs about body parts. Whatever. Too much knowledge might break up my rhyme.

            So I came to this revelation a few months ago. I was at this radio show as a guest being interviewed by some drunken friend of mine. After work, a three hour train ride, reading through a Balzac novel, a punk show, a drummer’s broken finger, riding bikes after I don’t know how many years, meeting my girlfriend’s grandma, drinking too much in too short a time and smoking weed, I found myself in a small booth in front of a microphone where I was talking too much.

            But I got to a point where I realized people want too much from punk. They think it’s important. That it will do something. Even the lamest mainstream asshole will say it’s such a punk attitude or approach to do things when one gets his or her head out of his or her asshole and acts like a normal fucking person.
Acting normal; just to shake yourself and say I’m done with following this bullshit. Punk seems to have a mission to do something. To break rules and destroy or rebuild the establishment. But punk is mostly about not being a fucking asshole. People know this and this is why they try to force extra tasks on us ones that are impossible to get done and with our forced out failure they believe it’s proven that we are dead. This is why they are disappointed when you are a punk and you seemingly fit into the establishment because you used your brain for a second and figured out its rules. If they see that you can eat with forks and knives while not shitting yourself they will think this is not fair. How come you can be normal but not a self-forced norm? Then they will say you are not punk and punk is dead because they can’t bear to realize there is life even beyond throwing your stool at the crowd, or shooting heroin with your girlfriend in Mad Max extras clothes. Simply not thinking your job is the most important part of your day since it’s only 1/3 of 24 hours. Punk bears a cross in the sense that we are cultural Jesuses, but the job is too hard, that’s why we oppose religion.

            It’s true that you will never hear people say that, “you are not a trip hop fan and trip hop is dead”—it’s still alive right? - Why would they? No one gives a fuck if you like Massive Attack or not. For Americans: Massive Attack is a British band with a political message and people listen to their music when they don’t have taste in anything and when they are really really stoned. Trip hop fans have no duty to serve. What would that be? They are lucky, it’s just a genre of music they are free to listen to, or abandon when bored and rather switch to U2. No one will blame them, question them, and tell them what they believe in is dead or a lie for loser teenagers. Not even the bands have to worry about anything. No one cares if their flame goes out because, like, who gives a shit? Was there ever a flame anyway?

            Would this be the point? Are we cultural messiahs cursed to be forever questioned, hunted, disgraced and crucified? Well maybe.

            But there is another explanation as to why a fan of punk music and radically normal ideas (for example not being a capital fucking asshole) is a punk. If you are a punk it’s not the punk that matters. What matters id that you are a punk. When you listen to any other music you are a fan of that genre you are a part of a bigger picture of a crowed, you are the part of a fan base you are not a single lonesome entity wondering in this cosmical chaos.

            Have you ever been to a punk show? You are a punk thus you spend every third day of your life in a basement. We are constantly among people where everyone is free to express themselves yet still we are lonely. Punk is not a mass. Our dance is pogo, moshing, whatever in which we are fighting each other. We want to destroy our surroundings while having fun. When we are happy we want to push away other people, not hug them and be together with them. Even when no one dances, our metacommunication says we feel hostile among people. Among each other.

            People who say we all just wanna do our parents also say that we are defined by our desires. The absolute of punk is unity. With desiring it we say we are alone and want it different. One never reaches one’s desire, that’s the point of it is named desire - this is the fuel for us to do things. Or something but at the end we don’t make love with our parents and probably there won’t be some Bill and Ted moment where the whole world gathers together in peace under a Discharge solo.

We starve for being together that’s why we say all these things to be heard and embraced thanks to our brightness, that’s why we tour to go out and meet, experience, that’s why we book bands to host them to invite them to make them entertain us, that’s why we are constantly communicating writing fanzines, singing songs, drawing pictures of skinheads sucking off each other, but communication in punk is never a discussion of two these are just parallel monologues howled by the lone wolves of this cruel world. This is what punks are.

            We are the ones that indicate the frustration of this world. When people say you are not a punk they want you to stand up and say: Yes this is unbearable and I will put this safety pin through my nose to protest against it. They want us to do this because they know we are lonely and we have nothing to lose.

            They can’t tell their bosses they don’t give a shit about their jobs because they have a family to feed, they can’t trash their apartment because there is a gathering on the upcoming weekend with their neighbors. While we without families, neighbors and any belongings are free to do anything. For them we are modern day Franciscans wondering in the world with nothing else but the desire to form a brotherhood with other pure people.

            That’s why we could be called as a punk that’s why we are punks, that’s why they see a meaning in this commitment. While I’m not always so sure if there is any.

Ps.: Gosh I fucking miss talking about music. 

#376

Great things are simple. They don’t need too much, they can speak for themselves. Great things are simple but deep at the same time, they conclude everything, they are ground zero for things to come and sometimes even for things that have happened before them. There are many great things in this world and it’s a fact that the Ramones are one of them. Speaking about music, Ramones is the best band ever. It’s a fact. They are not my favorite band, they haven’t written my favorite song, their first album is not my favorite record although that is my favorite Ramones record.

Ramones is the best band ever not only because Tommy Ramone died today.

            We all hate to be alone. Even when you skip a drunk hike on a Saturday afternoon and rather sit alone in your shady room to write a column for a fanzine that might not be the same if the Ramones had never written their songs. We feel connected when we encounter things, tiny things we thought were our secrets. These things are simple thus we mostly never tell them to anyone else. We feel that would be foolish either because these are too obvious, or the others just wouldn’t get it. What Erdélyi Tamás and his friends did was synthesizing this simple great feeling. Another great mind said, to see what everyone sees, to think what no one thinks. The Ramones based their sound on the feelings of how it is to be a freak, to like getting high, to be obsessed with loud things, to fall in and out of love, to have no clue and the only sense you have in yourself is the sense of humor. To be a nerd for weird things, be it vaudeville-esque horror, political conspiracies, UFOs, the streets of New York. Their sound proved that talent is luck and the important thing in life is courage. To be brave enough to know that with so little you can achieve so much. With anything you have you have to do everything you want.

            I have experienced the power of the Ramones when with my then best friend we were hanging at his family’s weekend house. Two teenagers on a rainy summer night with no better idea than to get drunk on cheap wine and listen to the Ramones. As awkward a two-man party can be, it was super awkward for sure, but a magical moment happened when my friend started singing “Pet Cemetery” along with the actual song playing in the back at the top of his voice, crying out of joy and probably teenage sorrow. The Ramones was this. As Steve Albini said about them first, their songs sound funny, then you realize there is something more in them and you start to think they are people you would hang out with. They are melancholic, funny, nihilistic, thoughtful, ignorant. They are everything that has happened to punk ever since and everything that has happened to music before their time. Their music lives forever, even if now everyone from the original line up has passed away.

            It’s such a terrible curse that people have to die, but it’s such a gift that we are allowed to create something universal. Tommy Ramone passed away today but his music is still here, it’s still fresh and even though he hasn’t done anything memorable in the last few decades, his death has become a celebration of what he and his friends gave to us. They as human beings couldn’t out-live most of the people whose music made them stand out with standing up and inventing punk music. But their music already killed decades ago that dinosaur prog rock bullshit what was once occupying young minds. They showed us a way that when you embrace what you have and squeeze out the most of it, great things will happen. The simple fact that this could happen—when it happened—worked. And it worked out to be this loud and it has made a change in the world. It helped young minds connect with each other, helped them crawl out from their basements and jump around together to noisy music in awesome clothes.

            Have you ever tried to play a Ramones song? The power chords are super easy. To play it like them is almost impossible; because what they did is what I spend most of my words on here: they put themselves into their songs, among their pure, essential music. This is the ultimate example of how punk music is great; because it is played so you can hear people among the sounds. The Ramones will always live. To be honest, it doesn’t matter if Erdélyi Tamás died today or if he lived ten more years or passed decades ago. Ramones live forever.

Now I’m gonna sniff some glue. Nyugodj békében!