#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.

#357

December is coming and no one has any plans for the new year’s eve so just keep reiterating their hatred towards celebrating the end of another 12 months. They are all going to hug each other with puke breath at the end. A year ago on the 30th I got an e-mail. I got asked if I want to participate in telling my version of everyday life as a punk. All I did before was that I made a zine in English and I wrote a scene report. And I have a friend in the inner circle who, I guess, kept his back for me.
Years are time intervals and time is an opportunity for things to happen. Was this a good year or not? It was just a year. There are no simply good or bad things except punk is good and jazz is bad. Thus punk was good this year. It was for me. All I think about writing this for almost a year is I always wanted to participate from the first time since I have read this fanzine. And while the actual process of writing my columns does not give me more pleasure than it did when I was doing it for my own zines or blogs last month’s letter section with Mariam articulating that how we are punx and how we have our secret world made me almost broke down to tears of joy that in a way I’m doing something together with this kick ass girl. As we all do who understood her words.

The words are always the same. We say young, true, not, giving, fucks and so it goes. But if the secret is not a real secret for you, you could spot “real” even among ordinary things too. So whoever and wherever you are if you are doing it on the way you think is the best you will be spotted as well. Or not and live a terrible life and commit suicide as Kafka did.

I have no great thoughts or beef this time so I will mostly talk about music and regular punk enthusiasm.

We had Street Eaters over in our flat, town, rehearsal room for a last minute show and some early afternoon punk lunch with pasta and bottled tomato sauce and late night drunk conversations after their show. It started lovely. I was having a late night “drunk on his part, stoned on mine” chat with my friend, whose farm they were spending a day off and he seemed to be so high on meeting and sharing experiences with these two lovely individuals that around 3 am he suggested me to organize a little show for them if they agree in the morning to visit our town after having their breakfast. And they did and it was great and they stole everyone’s heart with their punk love towards everything and each other. So much harmony. Actually more in living their lives and dealing with the world than in their music which is already filled with great grooves and beats. So go figure how they are as individuals when the band is actually a bass-and- duo. I doubt that many people’s lives would be changed by well put phrases about happiness that may be true. In fact, those phrases are never true but simple and dull enough so you can project them onto your life to get you motivated. But when you see this in practice as other people really live their everyday lives by them, even on tour, which is not the most typical scenario in one’s life...that is so much different and inspiring. Their presence was unique. And it wasn’t stupid and dull like those phrases. It was more and in the same time it was just so simple. I don’t say that no one is happy but them as they also might have problems. It was just simply good to see lovely people among us. Maybe for a roomful of kids who have nothing else to do and are no late from anywhere on a morning following a Thursday night it could mean something.

Now to music and listening to records. Isn’t that boring that I put music always into the second part? At least this time there is no shady explanation why I was listening to bands and some pathetic bridge between the message and the entertainment. It is weird because while being important for life, music itself has so little meaning. There are books and movies that are analyzed and considered as materials of serious message, while music is just being reduced to entertainment as primitive indulgence since people realized that pieces of classical composers are not that good to listen to all the time. When people are analyzing music it’s more of a tale of the industry and the people behind music not the tale of the music itself. And tales of us as listeners. There are very few descriptions of music in terms of its the meaning. Maybe it’s too basic and ancient that we don't need to do all the thinking we normally do when we try to understand everything else. Even if we want to understand music. I don’t. I find joy in music. Music amazes me. I bet that’s why I like music mostly that’s either brutal or beautiful. This year was a blast in the sense of the releases of punk music and I have some absolute favorites meaning I let my enthusiasm decide what are the best records for me this year and I don't have to push my enthusiasm to pick some albums to create a list that represents my adoration of music. The good thing about punk is if it’s good it won’t get worn out by time and trends. I was cheated into liking ska music by the blindness of being young. As I see now, I won’t indulge myself in any kind of nostalgia and find myself banging my head to OPERATION IVY anytime soon. However, the bands I’m still listening to are covering a wide range in time and scenes and talking about them could still be fresh cause these bands are still fresh. Let’s start with something obvious: Christ Thompson is some angel voiced punk perfection. All of his bands are pure gold and it could be attributed to his amazing voice in great part. My favorite is FURY. Not because you almost can’t go wrong with less. It might be easier to seal your perfection into one 7’’ to last forever, Fury is a band I wish would have done more. This  is amazing “right-before-post-hardcore-hardcore” that hints into the future of sounds of a genre that draws it’s borders clearly. Fury is just so great in mixing viciously cool rage with groovy hardcore. The DC sound dominates on this ep while there is high speed rage that’s been held in chains by some epic, “slapping your tights on the bus as heavy as you can” guitar parts. Space love, space guitars, space hardcore. It’s so perfect like rocket science. Whole things feel like it’s a genius master plan done by some extraordinary juxtaposition of people. Like bandits of music committing the perfect crime. While it resigns from rolling with everyday bullshit and rises above us poor fucks it’s also very detailed and focuses all the anger they had into all those brief one and half minutes. The ep is so short it could fit into you and you always could reach for it. To be your ultimate weapon to throw it into the face of desolation. While it’s futuristic in a way it also stays true to the aesthetics of pure rage from the impatient youth. This is kinda how I hear Thompson’s voice. It may sound squeaky, almost childlike, but it is more like as if it would suffer from GHD as it has full potential for knowledge. One of the best things in music ever. One of the other best things, but this time in New York hardcore, is CITIZENS ARREST. One of the few bands that still can release good records. It seems like that there is a fountain of oppressed rage that never goes out. Usually I look for some relief if I encounter something this dark and massive in the way of being a complex house of suffering but the relief in citizens arrest is that there’s no relief at all. Their sound has filth, but not what they put into, but what they discovered around themselves in other humans. It’s just so honest and those fidgety guitars are rhyming perfectly with desolation. Their songs exist in a lifeless, brutally sterile landscape where all these frustrating noises while punching my brain they also cuddling with it with their fucked up beauty. Horrible things are carrying some beauty that’s what I have realized at a punk fest once where I was standing with a plastic bag full of beer and watching some Brazilian band shocking everybody. It’s easy to continue this analogy of weird brutality with ZOUO, the music I listen to nowadays. This Japanese band amazed me the very first time I heard them. The concept is beyond crazy, like they have translated whatever bizarre things I was thinking about japan in my own stereotypical way and that’s also what’s good about them. The menace sonic awkwardness goes along a solid backbone, meaning what they are doing is freaky good because it is freaky strange and it still feels like that it just has to exist. Just because some people thought why not to play ultra brutal hardcore restrained on mid tempo. That’s why it is good. Like if some people have read about united mutation and strange guitar centric apocalypse punk and created it their own way from their own imagination. It brings the warmness of fantasy through creativity into the rigid reality of existence. It’s just ugly psychedelic hardcore like a dough stretched out and lengthened, still can’t fail my attention even if I’m against punk over 2 minutes. The rule is that there is no control and no boundaries. That’s why everything they have thought to do is possible to be done. So just think about what’s life. We desire things and we struggle to meet them. If we can’t, we have to cope with grieving and this makes us different or better people. Form our identity. And if we can reach our highest desire which, according to the maslow pyramid, is self expression in it’s fullest we reach the absolute. And because punk is a platform where one's desire can be met, punk might be the absolute. If I’m listening to Zouo I can believe this.

The other aspect in music I’m listening to nowadays is presented by bands who are more like on the side of making life more bearable than focusing on why should we be angry. So there are bands that blow this bubble that it’s big enough for us to find some solace. Like GUN OUTFIT. First time I heard this band they sounded like I have already heard them. It sounded familiar. And not like I have heard it for the millionth time but finally the sounds in my head had a body. This needed to be done because it was missed and as it is so obvious it just makes it more close to nature, which is something truly/deeply for me in gun outfit’s music. The sounds are slacking, guitars slowly waking up from a sonic hangover with a stoned glaze. It’s music beyond music that resonates with the sub- and unconscious. Music to wonder about smoking weed and wasting whole afternoons with sitting in a garden swinging your legs half drunk. Their childish but brilliant melodies grab me just as their down to earth while dreamy lyrics. It’s dreamy enough that I wish it would be reality. One of the best current bands. One of my current favorite old bands as a rediscovery from underground noise’s eternal archive is THE CLEAN. I’ve knew about this band but I came close to actually nerd out and through them just in the last few months. Total rain music, where the drops hitting my windowsill are going hand in hand with the imaginary dance party they create and I have in my mind in my room alone. Wandering around sounds that are collecting the whole thing that is playing on guitars. So powerful while dreamy and familiar. It’s a soundtrack for everyone in every moment thus it makes life more bearable. Their sound is so wide you imagine landscapes to their music and whether there and people like a whole new universe or just a scene like a dream that you are carrying around in your pocket on your listening device. Wall of goodness that’s what it is. Oh shit I’m running out of space so I will quickly say that NEU! is fucking amazing space punk forever.

NORMS - DEMO (2013)

shameless self-promotion but whatever

http://normsbp.bandcamp.com/
http://normsbp.bandcamp.com/
http://normsbp.bandcamp.com/
http://normsbp.bandcamp.com/

# 356

How long is this zine on? Three decades and I bet even in this issue there will be someone still struggling with defining punk. It’s like life, it’s on for more than 30 years and we still try to figure out why or just what’s the point anyway. But this constant search for the meaning of punk is part of the magic surrounding this amazing international culture of everyone who is mentally smashing important things during daydreaming sessions, or who feel alienated and can indulge her or himself in lovely dissonant music, hummed by the youth in rage and recorded through broken recording devices. I think I did my part in defining my punk within these lines in some previous columns, thus the topic this time around will be a slightly different.

Now I wanna talk about the rules in punk. Which is for sure stupid, but these things are coming back all the time to bother us. In a way I like to look on punk as someone said about porn: it’s impossible to define but we know it when we see it. Thus although I hate rules I like to keep my natural judgment on things. Which is like what Spiderman has for danger. My head starts to bleep and vibrate when I encounter something that just feels like total bullshit. Although, I also know that I’m not the centre of this world, so sometimes I do have to get used to other people’s way of existence, even if it bothers the hell out of me.

Most of the time when I’m at a show I go right up front to only see the band and no one else. ‘Cause I don’t wanna care about people and their surrounding reality. I have collected many bruises and other difficulties due to people at shows and while they could have spared me these injuries I never raised my voice because I just didn’t give that much of a fuck. As I think about it, it’s in the game. That’s my stoic existentialist view of the world: even assholes are the part of living through a life. Somehow I created my space of living as to just focus on things in their purest form and this way I try to avoid all the social rules and disturbances. I try to listen to bands without too much context. I try not to care that much about how to fit in. I just try to be myself and not to want to hurt people who don’t deserve it. But I wanna be happy, so I want bands to make me feel good. I don’t go into this game with empty hands. I’m open to anything that’s real and honest and not jazz. So I say there is not that much of need for rules in punk other than what feels natural. And since being a punk is never forced, it has its natural feelings, an unwritten code of honor.

Like maybe many people would think this magazine is run by some messed up ultra-communist, non-sexual, pc-fascist lifeless losers who listen to and interview bands who don’t even exist. But the truth is when I was at the compound one of the shitworkers, or just a friend who was hanging there, invited us to a crusade to get my nose broken by tits at a strip joint. And later in the heat of the party after the failed mission, when we got back to the compound—and due to some messed up circumstances—I dropped my pants and did the Silence of the Lambs scene with a bit more flashing. People there who were I guess mostly girls just laughed. I had discussion of sex and was pulling out some friendly European neighbor-country racism stuffs, and although I was afraid they would fire me from the magazine when they actually met me in person, I actually had a great time there and never really felt I have to think twice about the stuffs in my head. I was among the coolest, nicest, funniest people.

It’s just if you are punk you know the rules by your nature. And of course nothing comes for free so sometimes there is a road to take to become the person you finally feel comfortable to being. Which is I guess just a modest way to say how to be self-righteous. But I mean we are born stupid and then we experience and get to know other things; so never be afraid to improve and question yourself and your surroundings but also never force anything that doesn’t feel natural. But sadly for some people natural is what is fucked up for others. Good thing I write for MRR which means whatever I say is right.

This whole topic came to my mind due to two things. First there was one minor incident in the brief past at a local show where a friend of mine who also is my roommate got drunk at a NO TOLERANCE show and went to the first row with a sip-full glass of beer. The lame mosh-bro vibe started and the beer was spilled and some old fuck started threatening my friend with killing him and another guy spat on my pal.

The next day the comment war started on a local message board about the ethics and rules of who stands where and with what in which shows. And while my opinion is everybody should stand wherever they want with whatever they want, the more I started thinking about how this really shouldn’t even need to be discussed. But somehow these are the rituals and cultish debating methods we always come back to.

The best shows are always the ones where something unexpected and unoccasional happens. I hate it when people are forcing these irregular joyful moments. When it gets awkward to watch how some people just have the idea to have fun but they are not actually doing it, just imitating. I hate bands who ask their audience to come closer and sing along or throw around motions, like they are directing you what to do to their music. I guess they don’t realize that they aren’t playing for the audience then or mostly for themselves but they act like their audience is apparently there more to entertain them. Play better music or find your specific crowd if you want a specific reaction. And to assume your crowd likes your music enough to know the lyrics and have the will to dance but some they just need you to make them remember this?  Saying such things is definitely beyond my understanding of how people look on each other, or should look on each other, especially at a punk gig.

This week I was listening to some inspirational master class where a successful and really talented screenwriter was telling his audience about how to be a writer. It had no influence on me. ‘Cause the thing is I guess if you are really gonna be a good writer you don’t need the influence from others, to find yourself in other people’s success. The only thing this guy kept repeating was how he knows that he doesn’t know anything. So he is not a writer. Neither am I. And I never wanted to be. I just have to tell my things to people and this is the laziest way. I’m a punk and I don’t need anyone to tell me how to be punk. If you were punk then rules—no matter who is telling you them—wouldn’t affect you. Even if you read MRR. It really just has to come to you naturally.

The other thing that triggered this flood of rambled thoughts is the release of the new BAADER BRAINS LP. The record is great, of course, but they flipped the switch in my brain about their modus operandi. I might know the real identity of some of the members or I might not. You could never know. This is for example one of the rules from them that gets broken. Here’s this band which might not have changed the world for me, but they made me think and I might have changed the world inside of myself thanks to them. For me punk is what could happen anywhere anytime. They set up the aura of their stages, they think forward, they have plans. For me punk is instant and spontaneous when it comes to putting yourself out there. But yet they wear masks. Once they played behind a white curtain that only let the audience see their silhouettes. This made me think—what’s the real difference then between a show and just a simple musical experience, listening to a record, or whatever? Are they somehow faceless when they put more effort into creating something that other new bands barely even ever tried? Does it even really matter to see someone’s face? Their gestures? Or is it enough to on the other hand feel a band’s pretence and ritualized emotional displays under totally controlled circumstances. Could more “real” music come through a white curtain? Do names matter? Their former bands? Have you read their survival notebooks? Does anyone care? This band brings me that much food for thought, I feel like I’m on a “What’s Punk?” feast. And while their music stands out in balancing crushing hardcore, visceral punk melodies, experimental collage samplings and battle hymn anthems, their music sounds just like everything else they do, as part of a bigger plan. As a weapon—something above us while it’s among us. As looking for whatever is inside you and how to bring it out in the most proper way. This is why those masks are not covering anything that is important, but making us see what is. Some bands are more than music even if they are actually great in song writings too. And although I would love to write amazing sentences about every band, that would be a rule for myself I just won’t follow now. Just be yourself kid!