#358

I have started writing this column on the 30^th of December at 1 am. Guess I will finish this a week after the deadline deep in January. Whatever. My birthday is coming up. It’s on the 3^rd of January. I will turn 26 which means it’s 4 more years till punk death = 30 (it means you will come to a point when you realize you have been punk through half of your life even if you’ve joined in the last minute which is the age 16 and you have to decide to either carry on and disappear with honor). January 3^rd. Same exact day Nietzsche went crazy after he saw a person beat a horse into almost death. On that date Hitler’s father died which is kinda funny if I think about it, my dad shares a birthday with Hitler’s death day. Both of us look like we are jews while we are not. Also my first band (who were supposed to play it’s first show on my 16^th birthday but got delayed to one week further) broke up on my father’s birthday and on hitler’s death day. It’s just my sentimental mind that makes such a big deal out of dates not that I have the agenda to point out that there is some cosmic thing about me and nazi leaders. I still am just some regular dude who maybe thinks too much about the whole universe.

I have a roommate but our flat is just one room. I ordered him to set up a surprise party for me otherwise I will throw him out to the streets. Cause for sure I’m just like everybody else I want surprise parties every year and also survive my funeral and see how people have realized since I’m gone they kinda loved me. I only had one birthday party and maybe I had it cause I share the same birthday with one of my best friends. So he had a birthday party and I was invited as well and I got a cake too. I almost had an amazing birthday once.
I was a freshman in high school and just got into punk in the sense of that I have started to go to shows in every 3 months and also posting on local message boards controversial bullshit to have beefs. There was a festival on my birthday with all the best local bands who I loved then. Two of them were raised me in a way. And we were supposed to go there with all my norm friends and a girl from my class who looked beautiful, listened to NOFX and she was kinda sweet to me (she ended up being a junkie).

Everyone quit on me early afternoon. So from the best possible night of my then so far life by a second it turned into the worst shit ever. I locked myself into my room and was just blasting one of the bands’ - that played that night - cd on full volume and sang along to the lines like “if they say life is a crime then I’m innocent cause I wasn’t happy not even for a day”. While I cried. My mother freaked out because she is just a person who cares so she asked my brother to sacrifice his Saturday night and be my entourage or more like my driver and security guard for that show. She said I can’t be depressed on my birthday. But she also thinks no one should be depressed at any time, even if she always tells me she is depressed – luckily she isn’t really. My brother dug out some of his most worn out cloths as camouflage and we went for the show. He got bored quick so we only watched two and a half bands and the half band was the band that changed my life and also it shared members with my then future band and the friend with whom we share the same birthday. Also the band I was blasting in the solitude of my temporary teenage tragedy I shared membership in two bands with one of the members and soon i will help him out on bass for his solo D-beat project band.

That night was kinda magical. The place was in a total blown out part of the city. Many scary people: Strung out bums, aggressive skinheads, random low life people. My brother stayed in the back and I lost myself in the crowd. The whole event was like finally I stepped into a place where I have belonged. It was full of excitement and addictive danger. I saw many things that night that was new but I understood them. It was the same frustration I had, the same need to be somewhere where you feel finally at home. When you feel like finally you are close to something important. Where you can disappear to be found. It was something I could describe but it wouldn’t make any sense to people who wasn’t there even if they would understand my words.

A decade later after a Neon Piss show here in our town we were sitting outside the venue drinking beer and smiling. Discussing with friends that if we have gone to work tomorrow what would have we said. That we went to a show. But it was at a rehearsal room at an industrial site. Where only 40 people came but the whole room was dripping in sweat and happiness and spilled out beers thus it felt like the whole world is in that room. The crowd was half naked even some girls, that we were hugging each other and due to this at some point everybody lost track of where their bodies end and other people’s start. It was just beautiful. While it was the same thing, the same thing that is still fresh. The same thing that I have finally found that night 11 years ago.

In the unstoppable force of the crowd when my favorite local band played and it was just loud and beautiful and so true. The singer who’s now my friend was singing so loud it woke me up for days. We left at half of their set and I remember sitting into my brother’s car I felt like I’m in a bubble and this will protect me. That bubble has expanded and now it’s full with friends, and memories, and achievements. Like last night on my birthday where I got a fanzine with many of my friends saying amazingly sweet things about me, about how they see me and about how we are in each other’s lives. And fuck I think I’m kinda bipolar cause it is changing in me always that either I feel amazing for no reason or terribly shitty for no reason. But maybe they are right and everything is possible and we will make it.

It’s just weird. I hate education but love learning and thinking so nowadays sometimes I read philosophy mostly on Wikipedia and then think for myself. Probably this made me realize things or worse and due to I’m stupid as fuck I project these badly understood ideas on my life. Anyway I spent this afternoon with hanging with my friends, ate a lot, made out with an amazing girl then met for a birthday dinner with my ex girlfriend to eat ramen and soup dumplings, strolled with her a little bit, had couple laughs, said our good byes then I started listening to Neu!, toke a bus ride and started reading my birthday gift which was the fanzine. And started crying on the bus. Came home finished the rest. Not all my friends wrote into this. And it was weird who were some of the people who did but instead of feeling that I lack some people here I just started recalling all the amazing things that have happened to us, with us and how I love some people and how much they did for me. And fuck one of my all time favorite band Cloak / Dagger just made a picture for me with all of them greeting me with pizza and moonshine. This made me think on something else as well.

One of the most influential people from the Bay Area scene and maybe from all over the world has just passed away in the recent past. I have never met Sarah Kirsch although one of my best friends played with her in many bands and she was his best friend. When I read the news I did not know what to do. I just felt that there’s a friend at the other end of the world and he is in a big loss and I just can’t help him now. I can’t be there for him cause when someone dies it’s the people who are still alive and in grieving matters. It was amazing in a way how many people reacted with telling their appreciation on how much Sarah did for them, for her city for her community for our community that is international punk. And it was Robert from MRR and Terminal Escape was who said these sort of things should be said to each other while we are alive. So I wrote a letter to my friend and I told him how much I miss him, how much he did to me and how much I’m sad for his loss. And what else could and should we do to make life better for the living? For us. Mostly for ourselves because that’s the person we have to stay with for the most. And If you get appreciated just hang on for that. Keep it true even after you have received someone’s love. Just try cause the good things should start at one point.

Year End Top 10 from #358

lists are stupid but being a fan is the coolest thing.

12’’

Sickoids – Self Titled (Residue records)

Talking about punk perfection. Sickoids were the first band that made me want to do a list this year, they are that good it has to be said as many times as it’s possible. Cause they rise above almost all the other records from this year. This record has everything that’s good in punk it’s raw, desperate, melodic, angry, unstoppable, filthy, smart, ugly, young. And while it’s everything you have already loved they are using the old tools to create a new shape. To stay just what we all like: total sonic destruction that hears like love songs written by kids whose hobby is burning cop cars.

Rat Columns – Sceptre Hole (Smartguy records)

Winter is cool. No one’s out on the streets, lights are on due to the early darkness, mist clouds everywhere and all the time, nice cloths. Rat Columns is the soundtrack for me for these amazing days but will be for the upcoming seasons as well. And I feel like it’s a soundtrack for a documentary about my life. About our lives, it has so many different sounds and emotions it’s like this all. It’s like music that has to be made cause it’s in everybody who is a beautiful loser. This is what I’m listening to when I gaze in my everyday daze. Amazing stuff.

Merchandise – Children of Desire (Katorga Works)

I reached a point with listening to this record that made me put them into the guilty pleasure category cause it was embarrassing how much I played their record. I played this when friends came over, when I went on wet summer nights to get drunk at islands, when I went to dates, when I came home after failed dates. When we were just hanging out, eating spaghettis after midnight, all the fucking time. Even at work where people started digging it. This is just beautiful and ugly, a whole universe under a blanket, where people who maybe pushed down in and by life go into their strange rooms and they create something among their four walls that is bigger than life. New Order plays Beat Happening songs which are as serious as Angels of Lights with a Neu! sound. Eat drugs and dance love.

Creem – Self Titled (Deranged records)

I remember when glue sniffing punks were opening for bands like Terror. When i was 16 i thought Bridge 9 is the best label ever. Then there was a growing ditch between punk and hardcore but at one point in the recent past bands started to appear who could grab both the punk and the hardcore scenes’ attention. I mean those who are way deep in their own subgenres. Creem is a perfect example for this cause they are fucking amazing. Skinheads with sneakers, edge people in smoke stink shirts. They are disgusting in a way Life’s Blood or Negative Approach were, mixing that amazing blocked rage clockwork orange violence of the Blitz sound with filthy new york trash era hardcore. This band proved me that room moshing could be fun.

Baader Brains – New Era Hope Colony (Empyre Records, Clean Plate Records, Ebullition Records)

Sometimes it bums me out how some bands who actually sound pretty good have nothing to say. And sometimes I get bummed out cause I’m dumb to understand everything Baader Brains is saying. This band is amazing cause you could feel and hear and read that these people put their time and creativity and message and power into these songs and expanded them to their fullest capabilities. And the result is some unique record that is everything that is good in punk and the overall message is everything that’s good in being an intelligent mammal. And there’s a United Mutation cover!!!

Criminal Code - Cold Thought (Inimical records)

Criminal Code had a word about them before their sounds have reached me. Most of the times this triggers high hopes in me and the higher you go the harder you could fall. I put this record on for the first time and it was just beyond my imagination. Bands like Criminal Code: i can only call them punk cause they are bringing the essential of the genre as much as there is only this single word to describe them the best. They sound modern but timeless modern, they are powerful but melodic, raw but smart. The wall of sound guitars with their everyday life gloom. There’s tension in every of their songs which is constantly rising, it’s like brilliant punk through an overdrive. Every sound is killer on this one. This was probably the best guitar centric record this year. 

Neon Piss – self titled (deranged)

This record had to grow on me. I loved their demo and their live performances and while the record is almost the same it sounded so monumental in their final studio form that it was too much to digest in the first couple listens. They not only put their melodies, desperation and anger into these songs but the overall record is just full with the well thought construction of punk awesomeness. It just makes you find friends and while you skate around a smashed cop station’s parking lot you could sing along to these amazing anthems of the strange youth.

Puffy Areolas - 1982: Dishonorable Discharge (Hozac records)

Ordinary thing about smoking weed regularly is even when you are sober you imagine how better things were if you were stoned. Ordinary thing about Puffy Areolas is they make you feel you are stoned and it’s 5 am but you still just want to fuck your brain up with more materials. This sounds like if some crazy scientist drugged Void and made them into a creepy psychedelic hardcore jam band. Perfect background music for garden parties where you smoke your night in burning plastic among bile puking punks.

D-Clone - Creation And Destroy (540 records)

They said no emotions or memories in this list but I first heard this record at a filthy basement when two noise-not-music head friends were blasting it with making silly faces and satanic hand signs. Music like this has always depressed me in a way but then I have realized it’s more than fun. This record is amazing. It’s so distorted and loud and noisy and fast beyond being able to keep up with them it turns into something grotesquely beautiful that’s like funny or happy while it’s not. It’s the evil baby their parents love but everybody else hates. This is music what your grandma thinks you are listening to when you tell her about punk. Full blown noise terror which makes you spill your beer on leather jackets. I could say punk and hardcore but seriously this sonic madness is in another universe.

Uv Race – Racism (In the Red recordings)

For some reason I always just end up listening to Uv Race and their new record is maybe their best to date. I like it when music sounds like it would be fun to hang with the people who are making it. This record is just fun cause post punk supposed to be fun. Whatever, this is the only time that racism were cool in history.

7’’

Coffin Pricks – Group Home Haircut (Stationary (Heart) Recordings)
Shaved Women – Static (Pass Judgement Records)
Dark Times – Girl Hate (Fysisk Format)
Lower – Walk On Heads (Escho)
Shoppers / Panzram – Split (Feeble Minds Records)
Homostupids – New York Jammin’ (hozac records)
White Lung – Self Titled (sabotage records)

Tapes

Piss Crystals – This is crazy. Hailing from Budapest, Hungary Piss Crystals is mixing kraut rock, noise, hardcore punk and black Sabbath-ish jams. And they end up sounding like Dinosaur Jr playing deep wound songs. Soooo good.

Replica – this band is a total fucking rager and there was no question they were the band of 2012. Angry people creating amazing noise. My vocabulary is not enough for them so I rather just bang my head to their totally awesome sounds.

Spiritual Warriors – now this is what makes me happy. Some stoned hippies blasting distorted love hardcore. How the fuck did it happen that the live recording on their tape is way better than the studio one? Anyway, this is the music that I like.

Caged Animal – I was at a hardcore show where the singer said “the next jam is a stomper”. No idea about what that is but listening to this demo makes me wanna kick myself in the head with a boot it’s that good. Delete me from facebook if you disagree.

Index – Reverbed fun punk perfection for dreamy cool bedroom dance parties. The sounds are fitting shitty tattoos, awesome haircuts and midnight parking lot skate jams. This band is just so effortlessly cool listening to them will make you cool as well. In the punk way.

Proxy – if you like drinking beer, hanging with friends, wearing nice cloths and yelling oi too much this will be your band. Nah, they are way better with melodies and overall music that it’s like oi music for everyone. Anyway This is a crazy good demo even for closet skinheads like myself.