#367 - kinda

Hi, I'm Viktor i like to think about 10000 things at the same time and be confused and lose my attention over things like pressing the send button. That's why there is no column from me in #367. I wrote it, i have attached it to a mail but forgot to send it and i stayed in my draft map until i have sent my column for #368. But here it is. I will soon update my Hungarian Scene Report and Creem interview/report from #367.

 I had to go to the supermarket to have feeling. All I got was depression but I had my baggy pants on. Zerozero style I wanna piss in the face of the world.

Sometimes when I get really drunk I start to think about the universe. Other times I just ramble my fandom towards John Peel. This only happens once or twice a year but it happens. Then I start to stare on the sky if I’m lucky and could see the stars through the industrial dust that is a polluted curtain above my city. And think about the planet, think about life and everything. It makes no sense since I don’t think life makes any sense. Maybe it’s a joke maybe it’s a problem but not a task, or shouldn't be. Then I start to think about songs what are about space. Not Fury’s Space Love. Even if I should.
Whenever I read about dinosaurs I want to see them, whenever I read about space I want to be there, whenever I read about planets I want to observe them. But I just stay in my room and sometimes wonder out to get drunk and see bands play. My interaction with people are very rare cause I adore them but couldn't bear them. That’s alright I guess. The best thing in humanity is that our brains are sensitive enough that thank to imagination that can be triggered by emotions which are caused by art we can feel that we are floating in space. Sometimes when I’m in a room that are lacking that much stimulus I can start to hallucinate. It happened when I was making out with girls in dark rooms that had nothing but a mattress and a lovely lady who thought I'm good enough to get my tongue licked by her. Music can do the same things to me as literature. Only thing that sucks is I need to see more bands who are this cool. I wanna see how different they are than to how I imagined them and observe what they vision while they are performing their music. It’s a risky game cause lot of times nothing happens.
I was at a Blake Schwarzenbach solo show and I got goose bumps. A bit later he was standing in my kitchen telling me how English rappers are while I was fixing him a scrambled egg for breakfast. He made me imagine outer space experiences while I’m not the biggest Jawbreaker fan.
Last night I went to a show and I felt the space opening in my chest. It wasn't a decent feeling. I’m kinda depressed and confused these days what a surprise I guess exhibiting my life for more than a year now here made you a picture of how everyday life as a Hungarian punk is filled with melancholy. Yesterday bands played good. Or great I don’t know. It’s hard to say something is good when you feel they had spent a huge amount of time writing their music, practicing, and spending money on buying equipment, learn how to use them and still they end up with something I don’t like. I’m the one to blame and my taste in music. I just rather like when there are millions of bands and a few of them don’t suck. I like the humans and failure as I have said it many times. But I feel more and more disconnected with hanging at shows doing those routines with talking about things that could be said in two words. I love to hang and have conversations that are conversations not just people telling their shit and leave you. Stop this pointlessness. I’m going to shows for the punk plus. Because I like to see people presenting their ideas, their lives. I would be there if I didn't know anyone. I’m not in this for the party. Music is for the disconnected, for those who want more even if they have enough. Punk is more than music and either if it’s a threat or a protection it’s connected to some feelings what only those people own who are lacking something or want more. Even though I don’t wanna feel the void I think I want to be punk forever cause I can’t see any other thing to be or do in this life.
The only sense a person could chase through existence is I think to be happy. And music can make you that. Cause it doesn't consume your time. It escorts your moments. It makes them better. It’s just awesome. It’s danger. I like danger. I feel frightened all the time and I fuck up almost everything. I chase some ghost down hills while I’m drunk and I always fall on my face. I hate it but still it’s my life. You think it’s boring? You are right. You think it’s cool? Write jokes. That’s cool this could be done by anyone. 

Music. Nowadays I have found myself fooling around with guitars in my head. Playing music and trying to understand it a bit sometimes are opening my focus on listening to music a bit wider. I don’t mean I care more about techniques and skills. It’s just I listen to the already heard differently or being more open to jam some new shit. I have this thing with kraut rock and new wave nowadays and that mixed with ambient. Or whatever is what Eno and Harmonia has produced. Those were great jams to listen to when you are hangover and have to work. Just put on a headphone and relaxing time is on with it not being too hippy.

I was also blasting some fragile punk hardcore. I always come home with the desire to stay home even at weekend days and blast the Minor Threat discography. I end up walking around the town among drunken hordes of normal people and listening to the Fall and Fix. Or just regular dumb music.

Stupidity is an amazing tool when used by smart people. Dumbness is nothing to be proud of in this day an age of living on the informational highway but it’s one of the interesting things to fool around with when it can be a useful tool in your hands. This week I was watching Rival Mob videos on youtube and I have to say that band rocks live. Not to say they are dumb just because the territory of their genre is simple thus it’s not super easy to do something remarkable with a limited arsenal. But their glaze seems to be some traditional hardcore ignorance. Does it make them an ironic band? A bit. Is irony the curse of contemporary living? It is. Does this make them a band that leads us to decay? Nothing leads real punx anywhere so they are fun to listen to although I will stick to YouTube videos. And still I’m going with Boston Stranglers and Prisoner Abuse. Or Step Forward. Those bands are dirtier or less loud in the message board culture louder in my walkman. Step Forward was sick.
This night while I was trying to put together a tape’s cover I was blasting some vinyl. DYS, Siege, Violent Minds, Talking Heads and Hygiene. All dumb bands who are amazing. Primitivism is a pure form of emotions and sharp thoughts that is focused on survival. If music is nothing to help go through a life I don’t know what it is. Thus listening to dumb music is useful. As much as writing dumb columns so stick with me next month as well FOOLZ! 

#366

Always late never on time.

We played that reunion show with my first band this last Friday and it was strange. Even my parents came. My mother always told me i shouldn't scream cause it’s not good for my health and jumping on each other makes no sense.
When we finished our set i went right to them to tell her without her silent support, of letting me fuck up my life however i wanted, this could have never happened. Both of my parents liked our set a lot. The room was full with energy. It was a reunion so nostalgia and shit. All of us still have bands and most of us are playing together, touring together, and having fun together. The crowd was full with young kids, with our friends who are frequently attending shows so it was just a great night with fun, fun, fun.
Before we started playing i was siked to play that much i couldn't concentrate on anything else. I also don’t like when i have too many friends in the building and i feel like i have to split up among them to spend as much time with everyone as i think they would deserve. I ended up wondering around in the crowd sipping my beer looking for cool shirts that the bored youth wears as a statement.

At the after party i was dancing with my ex girlfriend and almost got kicked out of the place because i was making a phone call from the women’s bathroom.

Have i listened to music lately? I have heard the new Hoax for sure which is a great record. I liked them, then hated them, then i have spent night watching many of their live videos on youtube, then bought an lp and still didn't know what to think. This new lp is great though. Finally they sound close to what the hype around them is. Still think it’s like Exploited on double speed but making an lp in this day of age in the hardcore genre and not failing with it is an achievement. I wish i had more thought on them but i go for feelings when it comes to hardcore and punk. No conspiracy theory or thesis.

I have seen a Blitz video where they are playing live at some tv studio and it’s amazing. They are no doubt fucking high on speed the drummers beats his kit standing and when they finish playing you can see how angry they are on the reporter’s stupid questions. I think this is art to live like this. It’s also art what their music is.

I was in the supermarket the other day and got utterly depressed. Don’t know why but i did and it was just terrible. The only thing that made me not wanna lay down on the floor and weep was the fact that i can listen to music that is about these feelings and when i realize even from such shit beautiful things could be created i will be happy. And here I am writing this column while blasting Sonskull and Soul Swallower.

Today i restarted cooking. Made napa cabbage cold slaw and home made pizza. While i was jamming Really Red, Blank Stare, Comet Gain, Crazy Spirit. I wanna buy more records and books even if i will not listen to them all the time or make myself read them. I am afraid in a way everybody else will by books and i will end up not being able to read anything. Something that might not happen since no one is fucking buying anything that is not coming through them something machinery. But that’s alright.

The new Criminal Damage is great. Seems like everybody who is not skinhead is making great Oi! music. Writing this sentence made me wanna put up my Wipers lp cause it’s after midnight and i want those jams be my guide to the punk source of my brain. Flesh World is amazing. The one song i have heard but still that band can’t be not amazing.

There is just something really minor in music that makes all the bands i love great. I can’t tell you what it is because it’s not a secret. Or it’s THE secret. Anyway i'm glad i think i know it when i hear it.

Fuck, why is time the worst invention by man? It’s even worse then god or money.

I know too many random thoughts but this is what you get. I still love my new job even though i’m in a lot of stress because i haven’t figured out how to do it in the best way. But it’s kinda cool to work somewhere where people talk about Death in the office, i mean the Detroit one. And i could wear whatever cloths i want while i do something that i feel like has some sense. Or i will be thrown out after the intern period. Will find out.

I seriously hate to think about orders among bands i like even when i’m going through what was the best record of the year. But it just popped into my head that Total Control is might be the best band around nowadays. I know Sub Pop bla bla. Still they are combining almost every music that is amazing in this world and doing it with nothing but the pure love of sounds. Their singer is a graphomaniac hardcore guy, David West is in this band, one of the guys is a sound engineer and i love James, their drummer. Somehow they can translate their songs into the love of music which is one of the best thing that could happen to a band.
I also forgot to mention that an awesome Russian guy has visited Budapest and he gave me his band’s ep. Worshit. Unstoppable, vicious, Negative Approach fandome with a lot of filth. This shit rules and as he told me stories about how is it hard and weird to live in Russia I can understand their angst. On the other hand you can read all those horrible stories about everywhere. Is it the same everywhere? Corruption, cruelty, hatred, boredom, the lack of future? Why are humans so obsessed with future? Fuck all this. I’m sick I mean I have a sore throat not that there’s something up with my mind. It’s a gift that we can transform the world’s shit into our treasure. So fuck apathy! Make a tape!

norms - minden jó

kinda fun to have many artsy fartsy members in your band so you could convince them that doing weird shit is a good thing to be filmes.

#365

Whoops. It’s getting seriously deadline time. And it’s 1:43 am I’m dead tired, I just came back from a show and I will play a show tomorrow on a boat for people who dress better than I do and after the painfully hang over morning I will travel to another town to hang with people. Streaming New Order’s performance Taras Shevchenko session right now. Writing a pamflett against a band and our government. Reading too much of the middle-east situation and foreign wars. Proxy wars. Whatever. Sometimes I wanna do serious things here like no cursing and being a bit more journalistic or literaturical or other things. Like not saying “and shit” all the time. Other times I just wanna be like how I like to be. Like a bad dream of a weird memory. No order, full blown emotional wreck, drugs, anti jokes. Don’t know If anyone is reading this. I do skip some of the other columnists because the subjects I care about is not what they write about. As John Peel said the problem is with those who listen not who are providing something to listen to. Except if you are being a spokes man for child molestation. I’m doing so many other things for MRR now I kinda forgot I have to do this as well and since all of my texts need heavy edition I need more time.

Also please if you like what I do here check my blog too. Since that not only has extended versions of my columns but sometimes they are less edited = more weird. To be honest I don’t really remember what has happened since I wrote my previous column. It should not be due to drugs since i can’t remember the last time I smoked weed. Probably at some park. My first band will do a reunion show in support of one of our friends who is having health issues. I’m not really a big fan of reunions and somehow it depresses me that to get people’s attention you need to reform something that happened years ago. But on the other hand we see it as a nice gesture. This friend of ours went away to work and live in London. He is one of the coolest, most energetic and dedicated people I know. He is just pure positive energy. He is sxe hardcore, I’m a drunk loser punk. At one point we stoped our daily conversations but I never thought we went cold. He is just a person I will always like. And now it’s heartbreaking he has to re-learn to do things which seem so natural for all of us. This way it’s the least we can do to re-learn some of our old songs and just like we did to perform them as hard as we can.

I missed playing with those 4 guys but truth be said I’m in a band with one of them and frequently hanging and touring with the others. With getting a bit confused on ecstasy of reunions I started planning to organize a local festival with local bands to show the country there is punk worth feeling threatened by. Sometimes I think about maybe punk is no longer a threat it’s more of a protection. Also with just lining up all the local bands for this fest I felt like I have to do a scene report. So be prepared. I think the key for a good scene is that you should just appreciate the good things. And the good things are not only a world wide hype. There are millions of bands like Iceage around you but they are better but to realize why you just have to listen and not only be told. Just today I was listening to this band called Ragana and I have no fucking idea who they are and what they do but their demo is rad. You just have to be happy and with punk around you it’s not that difficult.

I was also rereading layla’s review of my zine. And it made me wonder back to those times when I did it. Also to times when she was writing columns which she should do again. And for fuck sake I should finish my fanzines and I should finish my scene report and sort out pictures for the interviews I made and finish this column. I have started working as an unpaid intern for a news site which is cool I guess. I have never wanted to be a journalist because I know I have no intention to keep a proper word order and I could not give a flying fuck about gramer. But I do like to write and I do hate the government and assholes who I can just in a micro way piss off and it’s just so cool. The first time I had to call around government offices to fact check something about corruption in a district and it turned out those pigs are dirty as shit I was just so happy that I could be the part of busting the balls of those assholes. I always thought having a job is not important. I mean what you work shouldn’t be the most important thing in your life. But for the first time doing something daily for 8 hours what I like to do and in a way feel capable to do it, it’s just really rewarding. 

Ah fuck, I’m out of step with the world. I barely listen to any new bands which I really should cause I want to but I’m lazy as shit too with reading books and watching movies. I can’t remember when was the last time I cooked something that is a meal not just fried eggs or a cheese sandwhich with mushrooms. But I eat out a lot. Who cares? When did food become the new rock and roll? The new Svenonious book on rock and roll and mostly on life is really worth reading. I think I seriously did not listen to any music last month. But we recorded a new demo that will be out on vinyl. I rode a bike drunk for long hours and after that I have slept in a Christian dorm’s chapel almost naked with one hand in a glass of booze. I did not piss myself. I was at a garden party and a seventeen year old girl told me to fuck off in a punk way because my band covered a lame song at one of our shows out of a joke. But how cool is this teen girls being punk and telling old farts like I’m to fuck off. I just did mushroom alone while my friends were sitting around me and it was so weird to talk about people breaking their edge. Who gives a fuck? It’s not about burning out, I respect all my friends who are still straight edge but for fuck sake there are things in life that is still punk but matters a lot more. At the end Marx wasn’t a Marxist so please realize forced ideologies are killing us. I should force some fucking counter culture on me cause I’m being afraid I will become lazy and boring.

#364

Thank whatever higher power for being kicked in the face at shows or falling on the floor with my face enough times to have a nose that is completely useless except for serving as a target of anti-Semites and making me unable to smell the punk life that should be circling in my room right now. This is written from a worn out bed among possibly stinky sheets. And the ride has not ended. This week I had three bands in my flat on two nights and shit has happened. Now I’m listening to my gifted Wipers lp through my headphone and getting paranoid as the caffeine is sneaking out from me and my good night beer kicks in. Will grill some mushrooms for a cheese sandwich later. Gosh I ordered some ‘shrums. Future tripping. Also jamming Kinks, the early recordings. And Gas Rag as yesterday I was in a wild van that was cruizin around my town looking for the right bar and blasting this particular band’s demo, full with punx singing along and spilling shit on each other. I still think every single day that Gun Outfit’s new album is the best thing ever, their totally dreamy music is for those who will sleep when they are dead and stay awesome while alive and awake. I’m gonna lay down in the grass and let the sky suck me in while I blast this from a broken stereo. It is meant to connect you with things beyond objects and time. Why are things that are damaged able to tell the truth in a better way? I just wanna eat pizza in my bed, beat the shit out from my computer in chess and surround myself with art. Other people’s art. Whatever. I started to appreciate architecture since last Saturday when I had to spend some time in a dystopian-failed-futuristic, now-rotting-in-it’s-own-shit train station in my country and was watching neo nazi skinheads drinking beer in a happy way while I was just wondering about my glory days spent in the Rat / Xerox van while yeah, I was listening to Gun Outfit. I love music, and I can’t believe how good it is. The whole thing. All the bands. The feeling that it’s not certain. It’s not what you see, it’s not what the story should be. It’s only noise that resonates in your head and the rest is up to you. I love The Pin Group with their spooky, gloomy, wonderfully strange sound which might be familiar to you if you have ever had strange thoughts like still finding warmth on a cancelled beach day, or The Packs with their mellow power of bright darkness, Krakdown, Psycich TV single collections with the greatest lover of all time. Genesis P Ordige is a weird human and I hate myself for having stucked to the attitude and rather playing a show with my band than seeing him perform on PTV3’s final tour in my town. I’m so obsessed with that The Fall song Barmy that I wish Mark E Smith would have taken an E when they played the Hacienda. And listening to Siege, DYS and New Order till the sun comes up. Or getting high every night for a week via my pipe and watch early videos of Meat Puppets, Die Kreuzen and Das Damen for endless hours. I should finish my zines. And my short stories. People, do your shit and be better than me. I wanna listen to bands that start with a C. Sometimes I want to do so many things that I end up doing nothing but thinking on how I could watch movies and listen to music at the same time. I love music that sounds like puking at 4 am and I like fanzines that read like they were written in one night and their authors just created another universe on their pages. I have been to so many good shows lately. And I saw My Bloody Valentine and When You Sleep is still better than almost anything else. Like a wake up kiss from a deep sleep. Music for the dreamers. These sounds are like secret visions going on in your head that they surprisingly seem to know about, at the concert they sounded like the 90s, the whole decade, which was, by the way, so weird and emotionally exhausting that at one point I felt like something will just end. I feel this nowadays very often,too. Doomsday or finally heaven? Will find out.

Kriegshog is cool. I love hardcore that is not hardcore. Or not played by either mentally or physically healthy people. I just want that over-the-edge madness to be the hard in the core not just replaced by studio production and tuning down. I love that Japanese bands can’t really speak English still they are obsessed with writing lyrics in English and thus use their lyrics and the language as another instrument. Still there is that amazing frustration coming through their words from the singers’ throats. So Good. Zyanose is super sick.

Bands we booked in the recent past: Divided Minds, Black Gust, Creem, Nuclear Spring, Sickoids, Rank / Xerox, Rat Columns. The Divided Minds, Black Gust show got cancelled if you can call no electricity in a club a cancellation, so we replaced the gig to our rehearsal room. Hordes of drunk punks showed up from nowhere and were dancing wild with their skateboards in the fucking filth. The show was great, noisy and everything. Balkan desperation at its best. Leather jackets, patch distros. Black Gust is all the filth you can summon from your collection of kdb hardcore bands. As if germs were born into Zagreb, fed on glue. Chronic Sick with nice people, who after all still puke into your parents’ bed. Especially live, mostly in a dirty rehearsal room. Divided Minds is also hardcore but more from the Beach Blvrd era: stoned, pure raging, with lightly distorted guitars and controlled rage, very weird and powerful.

The day after this show my band and local noise makers CHAPPA'AI played a flat show in a city central house’s third floor. No neighbors, no cops. Sick shows, weird crowd, no punks but at least a girl came in a black flag shirt. People said that while singing I looked as if I could kill someone. Sorry I just have emotions. I was only paranoid that the floor will collapse and we will fell into another resident’s flat from the ceiling.

Creem and Nuclear spring were amazing. The show was tight, even some Hassid guy came down to be a pogo monster and kick up everybody in pit. But they are amazing as people too. You wouldn’t expect a hardcore band say siiick on your Hegel book and quote randomly Slavoj Zizek but they did and were just really cool people. Sickoids also, what a band, what a humble, quiet, awkward but lovely group of individuals who can do a massive and loud destruction when playing their desperate punk hymns. Awkward raging. At one point they just got so drunk that when we went out for cruzin and boozing with them we even sent a picture of our balls to the compound.

I have three bands now. There‘s lots of work, things are overdue all the time and my ears started to ring. But I have written a song that is just a very dumb psychedelic menace oi-core, so funny I was wearing a second hand fred perry shirt. I practice songs at nights and I only drink coffee on rehearsals.

Now I’m chugging beers but it’s a Sunday. And blasting Bad Brains. I should make a tape. You should make a scene. Or just stay up late enough so that your brain starts to process by itself. I feel like I’m losing my edge. I swear I haven’t listened to Crass in months but day by day I just see less point in all of this. How we go and play along with this punch line-less comedy, measuring ourselves and putting price tags on everything we do. But everybody can do almost anything if they are not totally stupid. There is money that is going in circles and seriously it is just given around and there you go, join your circle or shut up. Bow your head to the bullshit. I think I just wanna be happy and that’s all. Many times I envy people and more times I envy them for things I don’t even want. To be honest what I want is just to feel safe and be able to say no. So first I should feel safe, then I should be asked and then I could say no.

These are all just random thoughts typed out from a damaged brain through several 10 minutes of permanent midnights. Feelings. Nowadays I’m obsessed with record reviews. Ones that tell stories, situations, circumstances. There is music that captures a scene, a landscape, a mood and those couldn’t be sweated down to be described as simple songs played by musicians with instruments. These noises that surround music couldn’t be learnt to be fabricated. It’s on the dirt of the pants the bands are wearing, the glue that they are puking out while singing, the desperation they are carrying around even after leaving their rooms. We can hear and understand these, feel them. Not knowing them fully but just being sure that yeah I got it. Some things are just hard to transcribe. These are when you wanna punch something but don’t know what and why, you just shake your hands in happy delusion. And you wanna do things, wanna escape from something to be in the light, just spin around and cry while you are laughing. While real life shouldn’t mean that much to us. We rather roll around in sauna-like vans and talk about silly youtube videos and unknown records or are trapped in stoned daze in a strange kitchen / backstage discussing telepathy and fate or dumb hardcore singers and shell shock rock bands. Listening to kraut rock and paranoid wave, ndw feel. Soviet sounds. Music that was composed on soulful computers bleeping the binary sadness of modern life. I think Rank / Xerox is the best band ever, they are violent and collapsing while it feels all the time they are keeping the control, and even though they are some of the nicest people I have met there is something very outsider in them especially when they perform. Purely amazing and universal. I will interview them so you could be disciplined too. Do you know that feeling when a band is playing and it just feels like they are not just understanding whatever you are going through but they also made a soundtrack for it? So it feels like you understand them and thus you and the band are just one and then it becomes a huge US. Now I feel lucky, now I feel that life sometimes is amazing. I have read one sentence in their van and I’m gonna leave you with that: Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! – Nabokov.

fuck fact-core!

# 363

If I think about what is the essence of MRR for me I have to say it’s a 16 year old punker interviewing Kathleen Hanna or reading about Complicité Candied on the first when they made it to the first place in one of the ex coordinators’ top ten of decade zerozero list. I live one country away from the Czech Republic and have never heard of this band. Still it states that if you do something what is really good you will be recognized.
It’s a lie to say we are all equal in punk cause for sure if you are in a crust band your chances are higher to be recognized if you are hailing from Scandinavia or Japan. If your scene is on fire you will be in spotlight too and for sure bands will get more attention who are from western countries, have better economy, more established roots in punk history etc. This is just obvious, for nothing else they can get more money even for shitty jobs, so they can have better equipments with what they could sound better or at least have a specific sound. They can tour more thus be a tighter band and it matters if you can say “fuck it, rock and roll, whatever” and be just cool.

While bands from poorer or disadvantaged countries have to prove themselves and many times these turn into struggle that sounds awful. This is the sad truth but luckily here is this magazine with amazing people behind it. I’m not behind this magazine as much as I’m sad to be in the position of the forgotten from birth but I also mostly keep my focus on bands that has born with those advantages I have listed above. So why should I blame anyone if I could be stoned too? But I also have this idea that there are things what are just that good that they are irresistible no matter where they come from.

I really believe in songs and people and whatever else their cultural outputs are in a similar way as it was in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey where there was some higher power in people’s work that united everybody and brought utopia for the whole world. I truly believe in this that one day it will happen or if not we should strive to try to get it out from ourselves even if we die at one point of the process. This way all the beaten and forgotten and misfortune will find their way to rise up.

The reason why I love this zine is because it gives opportunity to people to be able to present their lives to the world. I think even I’m a good example for that cause, believe me, most of the people who see me wouldn’t even think that I’m being published in an international magazine and been read by others from all around the world. While I’m no different from you.

And I love that the people running this magazine are people who step out from this spotlight every day. They hide behind shitty jobs and don’t rush themselves to grow up. I just heard that people think I’m wasting my time with hanging with younger folks who mostly act like junkies and with setting up shows and why I don’t wanna grow up. Well the truth is even I get depressed sometimes of thinking I will at one point realize I was wasting my time with avoiding real life and now it’s too late and all I will have is to pine over my so called hey days spent with being a teen in my twenties and thirties.

But couple days ago while leaving my bathroom I looked into the mirror and found my reflection smiling back at me. I saw a man with a smile of a kid who still loves things that are meant nothing for the rest of the world and I want to keep that smile on that specific face. And it is just so fucking sad that people in punk are thinking I’m a deadbeat because I’m still a punk. What else should I be? I still love to do punk things, be among punx and to keep my punk attitude. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t order a fucking meal at a restaurant properly or deal with adult shit. Not growing up doesn’t mean I have to stay dumb or a useless child. Being punk and living a diy life means you are providing and doing an extra, smarter job to avoid selling out your soul without a safety net under your ass. Thus maybe we don’t ride jet skis as hobby but we spend that extra money which we never earn on not giving up our conscience. On that smile that shins back to you from the mirror.

Maybe I wear the cloths I do cause I like them. Not because these are the only ones I could afford or because I don’t care about the holes and rips and torns. I just like it this way. I love my denim jacket and I love that my friend made me a Dead Moon and D-Clone patch. My pin with the back cover of the salad days 7” and my tote bag with the cover of in a car 7” which was a gift from an amazing person. This is still a fanzine run by our common and mutual love for something that is still a threat otherwise there wouldn’t be people always everyday dying to prove it’s dead or we should grow up. Fuck the haters.

***

Skateboarding

Spring had been lost, here’s the summer. Mix tapes in my brain and denim jackets are covered with pins. Bars could go fuck themselves with their stupid law of smoking is forbidden inside and you can fall asleep at island cause you won’t freeze to death. Drunk hike through hills in the morning and trying to walk on water cause it’s a river and it will take me home quicker while I only need to stand still. Moving ground. Don’t tell me jesus was better than any of us. Fuck the hippies, always anyway. Punks have two official sports but one is just for transportation. I would love to ride a bike but I’m afraid of dying too much and I have pretty bad reflexes so city biking is out for me.

Skating for fun. For me skateboarding is the only punk sport and I swear this is not a fat wreck advertisement from the ‘90s.The two things (punk and skating) are so similar for me the simple joy and basic situation of being that annoying weird outcast, that person who still hasn’t cared too much of not being awkward. Mark Gonzales says in one interview with him that sometimes people look on the fact that he still does skate as if they were asking him “are you still playing with yoyo?” They don’t know. They have no idea how is it just to cruise around and sometimes reach higher than you can and try to Ollie up a curb and actually succeed with it and feel unstoppable. How much pleasure could that be. Just to be in the streets to always do something.

Skating is like you are constantly on tour with your favorite band. That band is you, yourself. You roll through life, the air is bursting into your face and you smile like a dog. You make noise, you move, you are in the street, you are part of everything and everything is an opportunity that you can use to have fun or express yourself which is basically fucking shit up that your stupid city built to cover the stupid reality and make tourists’ life a bit less boring. Still it’s up to you to decide what to do with what. And like with punk it’s just part of everyday enjoyment. It never gets old or you don’t go bored doing it. It’s beautiful like the poetry of the body and movements and speed and danger. The constant risk of falling.
It’s full with breaking boundaries and inventions, this thing was not built so people could flip down 12 stairs but somehow people didn’t give a fuck again about what they are supposed or not supposed to do and since then it’s just the magic that’s happening. And while people are almost killing themselves to deliver their stunts even folks rotting in parking lots skating around boom boxes on acid are sharing the joy of this amazing piece of wood and iron and rubber wheels.

***

punk as college

I have a business school degree. Won’t tell in which field cause it’s kinda embarrassing. I don’t wanna get fired from here but it’s almost that bad as if I were an intern for Vice. But sure the school taught me how to think like a manager. Business brain and shit. It helped me a lot. Being in bands since 16 with older guys (some were/are 10 years older than me) always meant I was the kid. In many cases I would have been the little guy patterned by my older brothers. But in reality while the other guys had their works, colleges and other shits I mostly just had free time. So I was mostly responsible to handle all the work with band stuffs. I was doing the mail orders, I was negotiating with printers, screeners, was sending out records to zines, booked shows, tours, manufactured records, while I was publishing and distributing my own zine and with the help of the college I could always realize how I could do things in a more logical, easier and better way. I’m operating things successfully without contracts just based on mutual trust, I have achieved all my dreams in my hobby which is punk. No wait, punk is my life, my love, punk love and thanks to education I could use some professionalism in doing my diy the best.

I don’t know any grammar, have speech impediment and a neurotic as much as I order pizza through internet cause I hate to phone. Still I write, I speak, I run shit and eat pizza every day. Punk is the best thing that has ever happened to me and sure it’s a hard job as well to convince people in the real world the things you have done under the ground are useful in their world as well, but just at a job interview for a multinational company many of the questions I got was about how I work in teams. Well for 10 plus years I do nothing else daily but try to be successful with other people in the things we do. Without a safety net. I have learnt from how a magazine is been published through how shirts are screened to how cut a tape into length at home and many other things too. Managing skills and shit.

What do you think people who run this magazine couldn’t be useful in a business environment? Punk is fucking nothing but problem solving and hardcore management. With the weirdest people who are sometimes the least motivated, very flakey and still we are here and everything is mostly alright. And if every idiot could do the work what punks are doing the world would be a better place.

This does not mean I wasn’t lucky. I was a bit but I had to work a lot before I could be lucky. It’s like maybe luck could lead you into circumstances you always wished to be in but when you have arrived then you’ll have to prove yourself if you don’t wanna fall out of luck. Also, never think that this hard work is just something that must be done. It’s fun when you are spending your nights and days and thoughts on your own shit cause this is what you are. Don’t be afraid to do things in the best possible way but keep in mind diy is the best possible way. Basically this all is just avoiding failing and believe me if you care you will succeed.

#362

I’m listening to so much good new music and new music that suits my state of mind nowadays that I  can hardly think about topics that would be worth to discuss here. Thus being smart or decide for you how to do punk is out of the game. No meaning, just nerding. Awkward raging but that isn’t true either. I feel like I have disappeared from my social life - still I was there when a friend of mine almost beat up some hip hop dj at 4 am with whom i I was smoking weed in the back of a bar - and think that everyone is having the blue around me. Truth is, I’m the only one who’s having hard times which in my mind are harder than in actual reality but total apocalypse hanging as a lure in front of me in my one-competitor dog race might indicate some radical changes about the way I survive life. Anyway this should be about music because hearing sounds are still the best thing in life. It’s sometimes funny. That how people think about you just because you could be the one to think about. I was listening to an Ian MacKaye Q&A and he said it’s really depressing and stupid what has happened to straight edge. It was his thing, it was a personal lyrics and now it’s a good excuse for people to call me and my friends drug addict fucking faggots. Dude you should try weed with beer and then tell me that it’s easy not to get at least half naked and make out with your best buddies. I find it funny how serious some people take our circle of friends aka the defekt scene just because I have written about it couple years ago here in the magazine. While it was just a personal report on Hungarian punk that I liked back thenFor some it’s sealed in cement ever since because this is bible. Like how shocked people are when I don’t know some legendary, musician, song, or band. Yeah I don’t know everything. First of all because I have a strangely functioning memory, second: when I’m listening to music I focus on  enjoying it rather than to learn it. For me it doesn’t matter when it was recorded, by whom neither what color of shirt was the producer wearing and in what type of chair he was pressing buttons and turning potmeters. Why should I give a fuck? I love how humans’ brains work that they are obsessed with information but why the fuck does it matter? For me it is just if I could connect to the music emotionally or not. That’s why I just said new music for my state of mind because I’m listening to lots of music that I have already owned or known about but lately I approach some of them differently  to how I did before. And this is how I like it. I don’t care about facts or trivias I love them when I care enough to memorise them but they won’t make music better to me. Shirts on the lp cover’s might but not the back information. I would fucking hate CIRCUS LUPUS if I knew Joan Jett was the producer for one of their records. I hate fucking rock and roll, that’s the last thing I wanna love. Alright I love the fact that Hüsker Dü was doing backing vocals on the first DYS record but for me this is when life becomes a mixtape. Some people just cram all the informations that are available into their heads and others just try to understand the basics of the subject. It is like how acting works. In some movies you see people play a character while in the best movies you see people being filmed, who by the way are actors. There’s a difference between transforming into another person or just acting in a role. So for me the best bands are not just playing songs because they have learnt notes and figured out how three tunes fit together but because they play themselves, they have something that could be told through instruments or through screaming like a baby. And I can enjoy the fact that Crass put out Minor Threat in the UK but mostly because I love both bands and adore their connection even if their music sounds different. But I only have vague ideas about the exact date of this release cause does it really matter? It’s just their music that sounds different, not what and how they do it. It could be called pear or could be called apple what matters at the end is how they taste. And I have no idea what color that girl’s eyes were I just remember how I felt when I looked into them. Quoting Modern Lovers here it’s that power that matters. I’m in love with that.

There are just too many things in life that I wanna do in a really short time. To mash everything together and have that elevated fun. I have this will to do basic stuffs. Like write again a zine about music and about how fun is it to fall in love with bands or just one of their songs. I wanna go down to a rehearsal room and jam with a drummer with me playing guitars blasting out simply raw hardcore songs. Like Faith demos, mixed with no wave New York falling apart shit, with Beach Blvd total drugged up youth drying dead on the sun, entertaining nihilism. I listened to the first Mika Miko lp and that sounded like this. While it’s just simple noise made by awesome people. This is it what I’m looking for, complex things in simple cases. I want people to play power chords the way I can hear through their shredding that they love million bands and still they have found their peace in playing infinite adolescent punk songs. I want to listen to bands that sound like bootlegged Neos shirts or reading coffee stained novels after midnight in your bed but in a coat. I want this collapsing cottage to be my shelter. I wanna disappear and live forever as a footnote. If anything being a fan of punk music made me, is a recluse, but I love this solitude. It has become fun to act for the outsiders like I don’t have a life, I don’t have thoughts or things I like just so I don’t have to blow my cover of being a fan of crazy damaged music and radical ideas of surviving life. Or living it. Nowadays I’m getting confused by it. But I have high hopes. Cause as how it happened with music I believe that there’s gonna be a point where the stone wall of bullshit will just break and through it’s cracks the real things will come out. Some guy called me up if I want insurance for the flat I live in and I told him no, and as a reply for his question why? I told him because I live like a 16 years old. He then asked me to hand the phone to my parents but I corrected him. I’m not 16 I just live like one. And it felt good just to blow my cover to rise above the bullshit. To tell him how all this game will go but I won’t be a part of it. This is what I look for in music as well to stop the bullshit, to be brave enough to be freaks. I’m jamming Finnish spunk and Fall and weird post hardcore punk records like Middle Class’ Homeland lately. I’m siked for the new Sickoids record and will be amazing to have them here in Budapest, get drunk with them. Good Throb is my jam, so Crass-like but more concrete of what they are angry about. Crass is articulated for sure but they sounded like they are playing music for the whole world while Good Throb is yelling against assholes. Also avant-garde-ish bands like Pink Military or Raincoats. The whole world is a mixtape if I have enough space for everything to fade into each other. And the worst fucking shit happened: I started to listen to some jazz musicians but even though they are technically more advanced than the punk players, I love, in a way how this chaotic „we play against each other, we play what we want, we play ourselves with instruments” method could click with the total teenage angst music that is the kick drum for my heart. But don’t believe it’s progression. I still don’t like it that I can appreciate some crazy tunes and I mostly love it’s benefit to get my focus improved when I look on my music. Maybe it’s a better thing to be open to new tunes or realize their greatness than learn all the useless infos about bands you should love. Fuck everything that is mandatory.

So many great records have come out lately, this means 2013 will be a joy ride of a year of listening to punk and used-to-hang-out–with-punx-but-now-rather-have-buddies-as-pr agents bands. Even if I think Church Whip’s excuse for naming their tour what they had, and while I hate it when people just shrug their shoulders when it comes to people might get offended and hurt – for real I even hate bands being named after rapists, murders and criminals - I also think stating that something stupid over a whole coast is like when you say fuck everybody, that’s a usual but still stupid punk sentence while saying fuck a specific group of everybody is just as dumb as racism. So on one hand I think what they got, they have deserved it. Open a bottle and don’t be surprised when something might spill out. I also think that the new Merchandise lp is just soo good and dreamy it starts to grow on me. Hope they won’t be lived up by shit culture. I just recently saw The Men and it was sad as fuck. A band that used to be interesting with mixing almost everything that is good in guitar music has become a band that plays alt rock country bullshit, American dream in Dylan shirts and just a band who plays a type of music or tries to keep up with a trend not creating their own sound. They played for mid level managers and for people who drank their cocktails with straws. Maybe it was just me who was enchanted for no reason from the start but at least I have woken up. New Milk Music is mellow as well but cool too. Even if it’s a bit more rockish and mostly stays on mid tempo rather than how raw and more straight ahead they were on their previous records. Even if I suspect some tricks I can indulge myself in this living for the moment cause everything else is shit but „hey, I still got some pot and dumpster dived pizza so let’s party” sound. They are not doing something new or original still it seemed people were hungry for their full lenght lp. And I could no longer say it was anticipated because finally the music was played again by whom noise should be played. They toured Europe with a fucking plane. They are not making anything new still it’s refreshing to have a band this simple. They don’t lie about  their music, it sounds like the lp cover for Beyond Living. Total nihilism. It’s for you to make you swing your hair around the room. I’ve heard lots of lame things about them but I’m not innocent either. Is there a better proof of that your band is playing awesome music than having a really stupid name as Milk Music still no one cares about it’s goofiness really? They sound like artificial nostalgia. They create long time sweet memories of events that you only wish have happened. And here they are with their grand work, a perfected rock record that sounds like a dream of a pot head locked into his room with the will to write songs about his whole world which is basically his room. It sounds like late night music for those who worked the whole day or haven’t worked for ages. They have lost their rawness but they seem to stretch out as far as they wanted and luckily not further. It’s just a great rock record that still carries some of the dirt of their past. No, Nothing, My shelter sounds like the never ending story sequel where that boy flies with the dog what looks like a rug. Here’s also the new Gun Outfit. Which is amazing for sure. I was raving about that band here before and they still have it or have it even more. Making epic soundtrack for the spoiled american dream, of how the sun forms all of us, it really sounds like people in confusion among doing something and there is that creative power that gets us out of bed but also that fear of failure in the real world. So imagination creates this shield that is a moment of fragile innocence. Hard Skin always as fun as hell but catchy as hell, like if they have figured out the right formula to write amazing oi songs by listening to decade of amazing punk. Just perfect and everybody was right that there are too many bands whose name start with S, lately I’m nerding out on total hardcore trash of Society Nurses and Stoic Violence. And these are just the new records. I just love everything that is filth and failure based punk music. And I ran out of space.  

this column was edited by the amazing Dori Radics who is a hairdresser on fire in London. Go visit her: The Rabbit Hole - Vegan Hair Parlour