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.