[This is the second installment of TO MAKE PUNK ROCK, an ARTNOISE manifesto. The Preface and Introduction were posted on August 2, and are available here. - germ]

The project of resurrecting a living punk rock movement begins with a game of connect the dots. This is where we gather up all the disjointed pieces that have been left for us from before and start to put together the fucked up form of exactly what it is we are trying to shake to life.

We’re already abundantly versed in the stupidest conceptions of what punk rock is and what it represents. On one side, corporations have literally spent millions hacking images into our brains of moody, self-destructive consumer-kids clad in tight pants, tough-guy leather jackets, and porcupine haircuts. On the other side, we have all the nostalgic ramblings of washed-up scenesters that like to peg punk rock as a thing that happened when they were young that either no longer exists or just exists in some bubble around them and their friends like some mythical city in the mist. Clearly for our purposes, both of these stories are total horse shit, but at least they can give us some insight into how our understanding of punk rock must develop along a radically different line than this junk.
Read more »

Leatherface
Minx
Roughneck Records

Why a brand-new review of this 1993 album? Our staff’s late-night plans to form a Leatherface cover band notwithstanding, Minx is one of the smartest, toughest punk records out there. Two decades after it was written, the songs here not have not only withstood their age; they are, in fact, stronger. And, at a time when ARTNOISE—and music-loving folk in general—are working hard to find worthwhile records, it’s inspiring to revisit the albums that draw lines in the sand. Here, then, is the first entry in our Punk Foundations series.

Fundamentally, Minx gets its charisma from Frankie Stubbs. His gritty voice, at once comforting and cutting, ushers us through the album. His vocal style, along with the record’s driving tempo and simple melodic lines, recalls the sonics of Hüsker Dü; but it’s the complex wordplay that distinguishes these songs. The lyrical nuances—by turns clever, silly, and unbearably earnest—can be easy to miss under the wash of distortion that cloaks the band; but it’s well worth the effort to catch all the words.

Many of the songs are intensely personal: in “Do the Right Thing,” the album’s sole single, Stubbs plaintively offers himself up to an indifferent world (“You can have me if you want!”) and stands up for the underdogs (“they can beat the world can come back for more”). Later, he rails against easy political answers in “Don’t Work:” “Pretty slogans and the crimes are meaningless tokens—don’t waste your time!” And my favorite Minx tune, “Fat, Earthy, Flirt,” laments people’s petty tendencies, reflecting on human nature in gloriously speedy two-part harmony:

But even as Stubbs lets his heart bleed, he maintains a verbal playfulness—reminding us that this band is, at the end of the day, a bunch of goofy British punks. “Heaven Sent” mixes up social commentary with colorful puns (“The bricklayer’s arse and his smelly stained vest… as a vested interest to be ignored more or less”). In “Books,” a rumination on mortality, there are lines from nursery rhymes (“If only their cupboards didn’t look like Mother Hubbards”). Leatherface are smart, and they take their music seriously—but sometimes they just can’t keep a straight face.

It is this push and pull—this cycling of bravado and vulnerability—that makes Minx so durable. That, of course, and the rockingness of it all. Throw on Minx when you’re in the mood for a new favorite song. You’ll find one here.

About a year and a half ago, I stopped writing about music. It seemed to make a lot of sense at the time. I knew I had limited resources to put into personal projects and it felt like the more time I put into engaging and supporting the music scene here, the more frustrated I became with it.

Through my work on ARTNOISE, I had been developing this powerful vision of what music and art could be, what punk rock meant, what qualities and characteristics made bands and recordings transcendent or transgressive. But it seemed when I looked out into the punk communities, the experimental communities, the hipster/indie/whatever communities that I was trying to support, this vision I had about art’s transformative potential always appeared to be buried under heaping piles of scene bullshit.

This bullshit took many different forms. There were the corporate and pseudo-corporate forces steadily working to hype meaningful artists into alternative celebrities. There were the cliques, the in-groups, the hierarchies of who-knows-who, who-plays-what, who-books-where that constantly locked people out or put people in their place. There were the pretensions, the expectations for people to constantly prove themselves, and judge others. There were the sometimes disguised, sometimes explicit undercurrents of sexism, racism, classism, transphobia, and homophobia that played out in varying degrees throughout the scene. More than anything though, there was the irrelevance—the feeling that at the end of the day most of the participants in these communities I was attached to were simply content to party, to play, to be seen, heard, and self-congratulated on their gentrified little islands around the city.

Read more »

Bats For Lashes
Two Suns
Astralwerks

The sounds of Bat for Lashes on Two Suns are strangely soothing, sultry, mysterious, and simultaneously upbeat. Singer/band-leader Natasha Khan, produces in her sweet, breathy soprano voice a dark, almost frightening undertone. “Like she’s forever in pain,” was a description a friend of mine gave. At perfect intervals through most of the songs are wonderful synth beats, present most likely from the group’s collaboration with Brooklyn-based Yeasayer. The violin solo in the song “Daniel” produces a visual of the singer standing on a cliff overlooking a gray sea with deadly clouds creeping ominously behind her. The four-person group uses wide ranging sounds, with as many ups and downs as a teenager’s emotions. The drums make their statement while hands clap in “Two Planets,” producing a faux-native sounding rhythm. The group also incorporates the eerie sounds of the autoharp and harpsichord. As though acknowledging their otherworldly state of being, the group’s Myspace page lists “UFO’s” under the “Sounds like” category.” Quite fitting indeed.

On their personal webpage, Khan’s biographical section tells us she grew up in Britain, but has spent time in the Big Sur, the Joshue Tree desert and Pakistan. The album’s unique sounds can likely be attributed in part to the personalities and cultural variations present in each of these locations. The group also notes their unique relationship with nature and the environment as influential.

The album’s final product is a brilliant display of what can happen with collaborations between different music styles. From the Yeasayers basses to the husky voice of Scott Walker on the song “The Big Sleep,” there is no strict uniformity on Two Suns. While Bat for Lashes is considered a major record label, the group is not yet, or hopefully ever soon to be, a typically mainstream album. And their sound is so varied, it’s very possible music lovers from every genre can find something to appreciate in this album.

In addition to their sound, Khan—who has already proved herself as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist—also makes strong contributions as a visual artist. The art present on the album, and within the group’s web page, is as visually stimulating as their music. The photographs only help add to the album’s experience.

Whether intentional or not, my search for a deeper explanation of the album’s purpose was fruitless. I can’t say for sure, but my intuitions lead me to believe Bat for Lashes is simply a group that produces their music based on what they enjoy. From the simplicity of the website, to their overall uniqueness, one can easily believe the group is not out to make it to the next Video Music Awards. Every musician wants to have fans and followers, but the composition of Two Suns is not meant to be mainstream or conforming. This intention, for me, makes this record all the more meaningful. Though unfathomable by some industry standards, this group proves there are still artists who give it all simply for the love of music.

Just a quick note, readers. ARTNOISE continues to move forward. We have new show-listings up for the month of August. The first chapter of a long piece about punk rock is about to go up. Tonight I’m going to post up the first piece of review writing from our new staff writer Angela.

Based on what she had to say about the newish, much hyped Bats For Lashes record, I was stoked to bring her on board. She has an honest approach that’s about as devoid of hipster cynicism and know-it-all hyping as you can get. I know I’ll be excited to keep reading her reviews. I hope you all enjoy her stuff too.

There’s still even more to come. Even though ARTNOISE has been moving at a snail’s pace for the past month, as the summer comes to a close, we’ll be at full speed soon enough. Thanks always for reading!

all love,
germ ross.

Various Artists
We Just Call It Roulette, Vols. 1 & 2
Russian Recording

Russian Recording is not a record label; it is a recording studio in Bloomington, Indiana, where more than a hundred bands, from local heroes (Ghost Mice) to Zimbabwean folk singers (Sheasby Matiure) have made their albums. The Roulette compilations, released in two volumes over two years, present songs from twenty-seven of these bands—a kind of studio sampler for the business and a good dose of publicity for the musicians.

In both form and function, the Roulette comps are no different from their label-released counterparts; but knowing that each of these bands passed through the same studio makes for a very different listening experience than, say, a typical K Records sampler. Roulette creates an audio snapshot of an imaginary day at Russian Recording: we get a sense of what kinds of bands come to the studio, how good they tend to be, how different they sound from one another, and in general who’s making their music in Bloomington.

Most of the bands sound fairly similar. There’s a lot of medium-fast hard rock with dissonant riffs and angsty vocals. The songs all rock hard enough, but there’s a pervasive sterile correctness to these songs: well-executed and—crucially, for the promotional purpose of the project—well-recorded; but short overall on imagination.

Part of this may be the result of the mastering—every track on the compilations was mastered specifically for this project. The studio was going for a uniform sound across the Roulette volumes, and that’s what they got. It’s admirable to aim for a cohesive, album-like listening experience; but Russian Recording may have sold themselves short by not showcasing a greater diversity of sound here.

There are a few standout tracks that are worth checking out: “Jacob’s Hand,” by Nate Jackson, is a classic, vital bluegrass yarn about a man who shoots his family and runs into trouble with the law. Sheasby Matiure’s track throws a bright Shona folk song in the middle of a rock-dominated collection. The irrepressible Coke Dares have three lightning-fast songs on Volume 1, all brattily glorious punk gems. Defiance Ohio brings some name recognition onto Volume 2, and Prizzy Prizzy Please contributes some frenetic noisy fun near the end. Volume 2 is available for free download on soapboxpromotion.com; Volume 1 is being sold directly from the studio.

So we did it, we’re doing it, ARTNOISE has come back to life. There’s still a lot of dumb tech things to sort out. There’s still more new staff members that we need to make this shit more sustainable. There’s still more writing that needs to be written. Shit that needs to be finished. Old stuff that needs to be repaired.

But we’re still back…

And even among all the loose ends, messes, and incomplete thoughts, there’s enough space now for us to stand. There’s enough calm and quiet for us to begin to have a conversation. In many ways, this project has always been a work in progress; ARTNOISE has never been done and has always been forming. I guess that’s a part of our truth… part of the prescription we put forward about how creation actually works or how art should actually function. We’ll keep growing. We’ll keep solving problems and getting shit together, learning new things. And I’d like to think that we’re never going to be done.

Rebirth isn’t a one time fix. It’s basically just an arbitrary signifier we throw out at moments to better appreciate the constant transformation of one moment of life into the next. Life has its ebbs and flows, but it never stops, and so it never stops remaking itself. And so we never stop and we never stop remaking ourselves… our world… our creations. Today, as we celebrate the renewal of this project, I also want to celebrate that kind of cosmic force of renewal that brought us all back here. The truth is that a lot of shit had to happen between then and now to get us back here. On my end, I know I had to go through a lot to want to get back here. But it’s fucking good to be back here now.

On deck, we’ve got new staffers that will officially be coming on board, new reviews that are written or are being written, and some new commentary that’s trying to explore the bigger picture about what punk is and what it could be. We’ve also brought back the PHILLY SHOW LISTING and will work to keep it constantly updated (as always, send your show-dates to phillyshows@artnoise.net.

Also, in the time between now and way-back-then, we’ve lost touch with a lot of the labels and artists who formerly supplied us with materials for review. If you’re interested in having our staff check out/review your stuff, please drop me an email at germ@artnoise.net and I can give you updated mailing instructions (we don’t have a public mailing address at this moment). Philly bands and labels are still a major priority for us.

Thank you all for reading. Thank you all for re-joining us after this long absence.

Trust me, the best is definitely yet to come.

all love,
germ ross.

This email was sent to a number of radical Philadelphia listservs by a member of The Defenestrator, a local anarchist newspaper.

I have reposted this on ARTNOISE because, as an outlet that primarily serves the city’s “radical artistic community,” I felt that his words might be particularly relevant to the experience of much of our audience. While this might not be how I would frame all of these issues, I absolutely agree with what I understand his larger point here to be.

White West Philly radicals often pride ourselves on our political commitments and our appreciation of “the community.” Time after time, I think that we prove our politics to be hollow or that our commitment to community extends only as far as our own privileged little subcultural enclaves.

By and large, we are not working to defend our neighbors. By and large, we are not working to organize ourselves as a force that can be an ally to other local residents with more history in the neighborhoods we consider to be “ours.” Really, on a lot of fronts, we are not doing anything… except for maybe putting on our shows, socializing, being hip.

I take his letter as a firm kick in the ass. Privileged white folks of any political stripe should not move into historically black neighborhoods unless they are willing to be accountable to the life, the past, the present, and the future of those neighborhoods. And for me, that means doing work, real work. That means real work to defend our neighbors from foreclosure, real work to fight development schemes don’t give a shit about the real lives of people, real work to know and talk with our neighbors, and real work to put control over our communities into all of our hands.

That’s the real price tag on cheap rent in West Philly. And I think it’s more than time for us to pay up. – germ ross

By A Concerned Relation

I got a email invite last week for the offices of the State representative network. I stopped by and slide down to Clark park as well, here is some thoughts.

So, now that the brew pub is open at 50th and baltimore it had occured to me that maybe now was the right time to write this letter. When you go and sit around all day outside the satellite coffee shop, do you ever think about your role in gentrification? I cannot help but ask this question because sometimes I pass by and I see what to my eye looks like a white settler occupation beachhead down there across from cedar park, with an increasing number of white homeowners within a one block radius and perhaps more disturbingly, Penn students/employees buying houses up to 52nd street with school subsidies.

I remember a time not that long ago when it seemed like there was a conversation going on in West Philly about gentrification and how to organize against what was about to go down… and then people seemed to stop being engaged, maybe they got busy or something. Well, while you were having fun and going to dance parties, guess what happened? THERES A BREW PUB AT 50th and Baltimore, and a YOGA STUDIO and a COFFEE SHOP. HELLO.

Now I am not one to argue that everything is black and white and that those things plus a bunch of white folks moving into a neighborhood simply equals gentrification, but in this case its really hard to see it as anything else. I suppose partly because nobody seems to give a shit and ya’ll are going on with your hipster lifestyles. I mean christ, the brew pub is open and nobody broke the fucking windows yet. It was bad enough when trader joes got a compactor and nobody sabotaged it. IS THIS WEST PHILLY OR WHAT? Aren’t ya’ll supposed to be anarchists or something? If shit gets to a certain point don’t you need to take direct action if you failed to engage in the process that could have stopped it? A bunch of you are white homeowners, you could have been at the neighborhood meetings, you could have stopped that shit. And what’s with letting these snot-nosed hipster fucks move into the neighborhood so they can look cool? Are you really just going to accept this manifest destiny bullshit or are you going to take responsibility for where you live and for what you have helped happen. Silence equals consent remember? People fight and organize around gentrification in places like New York, Miami and San Francisco and win their battles against much fiercer odds. Penn is not an unstoppable juggernaught and neither are developers, ya’ll just gotta get down with the neighborhood and start building some people power, have concrete demands, know where to put pressure and have an alternate plan. Organizing is not rocket science, and at a certain point white guilt builds into not doing anything and playing a part in the white agenda – don’t get caught up in that shit, its just as bad as not acknowledging your privilege in the first place, in fact its worse. Are you just turning into liberals as you get older?

Maybe if ya’ll got your act together in the neighborhood we could start working on city-wide issues again, like how the cops have declared open season on black folks the past couple years, or about how they’re building prisons and condos while there’s homeless folks on the streets and people are hungry and there’s no health care and there’s no jobs. If you were a bunch of socialists you would have done something by now and there would be an organization and a program. This is a kick in the butt. Don’t get so comfortable in your urban cool lifestyles, push yourselves, get back into politics and be part of organizing and action or move out – we don’t need you if your just going to play your part in the developer agenda.

…what does the rich versus poor really mean? psychologically it means you gotta pick your team. – KRS-ONE

[This article was written for ARTNOISE by the Afropick organizing crew, with some minor editing on our part.

Normally, everything that's printed in this webzine is exclusively written by our staff members. I've decided to make an exception with this piece because I feel that Afropick embodies in practice many of the ideals that we support in our writing—challenging white supremacy in and outside of punk rock, and understanding true artistic creation as fundamentally revolutionary and opposed to dehumanizing systems of power. ARTNOISE supports Afropick and urges you and all of our neighbors in this city to do likewise. These people are doing great work. - germ ross, 5/25/07]

On Friday June 6th at 8 p.m., Afropick (myspace.com/afropickmusic) will host their sixth show at the Rotunda (4014 Walnut). This show will be hosted by former Black Panther political prisoner Ashanti Alston and it will be a fundraiser for the Human Rights Coalition, featuring performances by McRad, Imani Uzuri Rock Quartet, and Purple Rhinestone Eagle.

Afropick began as a one time show. In October 2004, Maori Karmael Holmes (independent filmmaker of the hip hop documentary Scene Not Heard and activist), Chante Brown (lead singer for the black girl metal band Roullette) and Walidah Imarisha (poet, member of the Puerto Punx band/collective Ricanstruction) planned a one time Black Rock show to be part of a series going on around Philadelphia. The idea was to show people of color doing hard alternative music with a political edge. The response was overwhelming. Almost 200 people showed up, mostly young people of color. Everyone asked when the next show would be. It was supposed to be a one time event, but as Walidah Imarisha explained “we quickly realized that there was a significant dearth of venues for people of color rock/punk/hard bands to play, especially all ages spaces. So the show was conceived to be a quarterly show, and renamed Afropick.”

Over 700 people are estimated to have come to the five Afropick shows that have occurred. They are a very large mix of folks, but are majority young people of color.

The organizers realized that the act of being people of color playing (and in the cases of black folks reclaiming) rock in all its forms, of getting loud on stage, of letting out the rage and anger and frustration in positive and creative and inspiring ways, was a political act. Recognizing the politics of identity that were manifesting, the organizers also wanted to have politics that were about a larger change in the world. So the Afropick collective decided to make the show a fundraiser for the Human Rights Coalition, a prisoner family organizing group with chapters in Philadelphia, Chester and Pittsburgh (www.hrcoalition.com), as a way of linking the politics in more solidly to the show.

Ashanti Alston, former Black Panther/Black Liberation Army political prisoner and current anarchist anti-prison organizer, hosts the shows. Ashanti showed many of the people in the collective, all of whom are in their early to late twenties, that you can be dedicated to the struggle and to the cause of change, and still have fun. As he said at the Halloween Afropick, “We can get down and still be loud enough to bring down any type of walls, even prison walls.”

Each Afropick event is co-sponsored by a number of organizations and businesses who provide the support possible to provide this free fundraising show. This time Afropick is sponsored by The Rotunda, The Wooden Shoe, Books Through Bars and South Street Sounds.

Ultimately, Afropick is about building community, in as many different ways as possible. As Walidah explained “we want to create a space for people of color to be loud, to be angry, to be themselves wholly. We want to link up folks who feel fragmented and isolated, because of their politics or their identities. We want to create a space where folks can explore different styles and genres of music. We want to link politics to art, and know that we as artists can create powerful inspiring revolutionary art that can still move minds and asses. We want to make sure that prison organizations, which disproportionately affect communities of color, have the funding to go on. We want to introduce folks to issues they may not be familiar with, and highlight work being done on them that the mainstream wants to ignore. We want to honor our elders, and make sure they know they always have a place and a voice in whatever the younger generation creates. Mostly we want to fully embody the motto Afropick has adopted from the beginning: Brown, Loud and Proud!”

Mischief Brew
Songs from Under the Sink
Fistolo Records

This is the new(est) full-length album from Philadelphia sweetheart Erik Petersen. Erik’s been regaling the city with anarcho-folk-punk anthems for years, and recently (on 2005’s Smash the Windows) acquired a bass, a drum kit, and several amplifiers to back up his tunes. The full band arrangements were vibrant and airy, while still preserving the old acoustic grit, and proved Erik’s musicianship to be several notches above the average sit-and-strummer.

Songs from Under the Sink brings this fuller sound to some of Erik’s oldest tunes. The album is the result of some musical spring cleaning—songs culled from odd comps, dusty tapes, and forgotten demos. Although the result sounds like the junk drawer that it is—don’t expect the flow and tempo of a standard l.p.—the balance among these songs is carefully considered: even as Erik revamps some old favorites, a good number of the tracks here will be unfamiliar to most listeners.

And this, as it turns out, is a good thing. Even those of us who’ve faithfully collected every damn thing that Erik’s put out over the years—from the West Chester demo tapes to the Orphans discography—will find something here to illuminate the more obscure corners of Mischief Brew. We get to hear Erik’s growly hardcore roots on “Tell Me a Story” and live his high school angst in “How Did I Get Out Alive?” There’s even a nice Leadbelly reworking (”Midnight Special 2002″) to round things out at the end.

The new versions of some of the old live staples—”A Rebel’s Romance,” “Dreams of the Morning”—will sound a bit jarring here. Erik seems to have outgrown the need to write wistful ballads, so he’s lifted the spirits of these songs with a good deal of instrumental celebration. The tunes no longer brood—they rollick. Sometimes, it doesn’t quite work; but more often, the arrangements play as a celebration of how far Erik—and his listeners—have come.