Off

In a few hours I’ll be leaving for my conference in Las Vegas, so you won’t be seeing anything new from me here or on DFB until Monday most likely. I think I’m pretty much prepared for the trip, though unfortunately I can’t get my boarding passes to print through the electronic check-in, so it looks like I’m going to have to check in at the airport, which is a pain I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to deal with.

Besides that, things are going okay. I’ve had a very, very weird few days, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to talk about that yet. Suffice to say I’m holding up and I’m looking forward to things calming down a bit when I get home. Until then, wish me luck at the conference and at Las Vegas’s one (as far as I can tell) punk record store!

Feeling Good

Sunday night I stayed up until about 2:30 AM working on a long-overdue paper for my Plato and Aristotle class, and it really did me in. It’s funny, even just a year ago 2:30 would have been nothing, but over the past year or so I’ve been settling into a much more “adult” daily routine (well, at least in terms of the hours I go to sleep and wake up). I probably could have handled going to sleep two hours later than I usually do, but then I had to get up about three hours earlier than usual to have breakfast with the 18th-century job candidate on campus. The buzz of adrenaline that went along with knowing I would probably get to talk about literature for a while was enough to get me through breakfast (not to mention the Carolina Inn’s strawberry Belgian waffles), but around 11AM I started fading fast. I hit the cafeteria and got a soda which got me through about 1:30, then teaching got me through until 3PM. However, after an extremely boring job talk I was pretty much done in. I took the 5:25 bus back home, threw some dinner down my throat and was in bed by 7:30PM.

Speaking of that job talk, unfortunately it was terribly disappointing. I met with the job candidate for breakfast, then we had an hour-long meet-and-greet during which grad students get to meet her (though in addition to me and one of the other 18th-century majors only three people showed up), and by the end of all that I was pretty jazzed about her coming. She was an extremely nice, thoughtful person and I could certainly imagine hanging out in her office and talking about literature for way longer than I had planned. However, when she gave her talk everything just seemed to fall flat. Most people who read this blog are probably more familiar with punk rock shows than academic talks, so I’ll say that this was like one of those shows when a band plays their song and as soon as it ends the building is completely silent. No drunk hecklers, no cheering fans, just silence and maybe the incidental noise of a bartender tossing a bottle into the recycling bin. Maybe it was the afternoon, maybe it was the topic or maybe it was just her, but the talk did not go well.

After the talk, there was a brief question-and-answer period and that was weird as well. Our department came off as somewhat combative, which is not in keeping with our general character. It wasn’t so much the questions themselves (they were nigh-incomprehensible), but the way in which they were asked: pursed lips, pointed fingers, dramatic pauses, etc.

However, despite the fact that my enthusiasm for this job candidate was deflated, I’m still feeling good. I slept for thirteen hours last night, I have comparatively little that needs to be accomplished today, we’re having amazing California weather here in North Carolina, and a promo of Sean Carswell’s new book from Gorsky Press arrived just in time to replace the “fun punk book” I just finished (for the second time), the Flex! Discography. We’ll see how I feel at the end of this day (which will hopefully be a day of reading books, listening to records and riding my bike), but for right now at least it feels promising.

USHC Mix Track 28: Toxic Shock

Today’s track comes from an ultra-obscure Texas band about whom (as far as I can tell) very little information exists on the ‘net. After a bit of google searching the only things I could find out about this group were these facts: at some point or another these guys featured David Yow from Jesus Lizard on bass and they had a very limited (300 copies) compilation LP called 12 Songs from a Non-Existent Band released sometime around the year 2000. The LP came from an old demo tape, but I’m not sure whether this track comes from that LP or if they actually had a vinyl release back in the day. If anyone can help me out with info please post away in the comments section as I’d love to hear it.

As for the song itself, it’s a scorcher for sure. The first thing that sticks out are the high-pitched, snotty vocals that remind me more than a little bit of Nicki Sicki from Verbal Abuse/Sick Pleasure. Those are great, of course, but don’t let the music get past you either. On first listen this sounds like fairly standard early 80s-style garage hardcore, but listen to the chords the band is using, especially in the verses; if it weren’t for the fairly standard hardcore beat this would have a lot in common with noise rock bands like Big Black and (predictably) the Jesus Lizard. I’d be curious to hear if the rest of the band’s song make use of sounds like this, or if “Riot” is an anomaly.

Download Track 28: Toxic Shock: Riot (note: this file may be removed from the server at my discretion)

Nature Literacy

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the other day Kelly and I went to see a reading by the poet Robert Hass. While I liked his poetry a fair bit, a comment he made at the very end of his talk during the Q&A session really stuck out to me. Apparently he is a pretty well-known translator of haiku, and when someone asked him about that he went off on a very long tangent about the form, eventually leading him to talk about the way that we educate kids about nature in our public schools. While Hass was Poet Laureate of the United States he established a program in which kids do poetry and artwork about their local ecosystem, and every year the best pieces of art are displayed at the Library of Congress and put into EPA reports about the state of our country’s environment. Hass argued that we should be teaching children what he called “nature literacy” from a very young age; he said that kids should know the name of a number of the plants and insects in their local environment by the time they get out of elementary school (I still know hardly any of these and I have a Master’s Degree), and they should have some idea about how their local ecosystem operates by the time they leave high school.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the talk, and I think it’s definitely true that Americans are terribly under-educated in this respect. At my high school there were two types of diplomas: an academic diploma for kids who planned on going to college and a general diploma for those who planned to go into the military or straight into the work force. The requirements for the general diploma were bare-bones in just about every area except vocational studies, but all students had to take a math class in which you learned how to do basic tasks with money like balancing a checkbook, budgeting household expenses, etc. It strikes me that our culture (or, at the very least, the school board in Southampton County, Virginia) thinks that there is no way to survive without being able to balance a checkbook or fill out a 1040 form, but there’s really not much attempt to make them understand how their environment works. Our society feels an obligation to make sure that kids know the consequences of making mistakes with their checkbook or their credit card, but in my school there was no effort to show the effects of not recycling or leaving your plastic six-pack ring lying on the beach after you finish your sixer of Budweiser.

Of course everyone did have to take a biology class, but even for me (who, not to be cocky, was a little sharper than most of the kids in that building) it was way too theoretical and difficult to apply to my own life. What did dissecting worms and figuring out how dominant and recessive genes are passed on have to do with the way I behaved on a day-to-day basis? Absolutely nothing, and I think that my behavior then (and, to an extent, now as well) is an indication of that.

So, parents and teachers, I hope you’re doing a better job of this type of education than people did for me when I was younger, because it seems like a very large portion of our population has an arrogant, careless attitude toward the environment that our planet can’t sustain forever. God knows that when and if I have kids I’m going to attempt to teach them to respect the world around them and act like they are a part of it rather than relating to the planet as a product for them to consume and throw away.

USHC Mix Track 27: Battalion of Saints

Jesus Christ, what can I say about the unholy force that was Battalion of Saints? They are easily one of my top ten all-time favorite punk bands. The way that they combined manic hardcore, melodic punk rock and Motorhead-style burly rock was truly unique, and few bands could match their skill as songwriters. Unfortunately, since their albums have been in and out of print in the 20-some-odd years since they originally put them out Battalion of Saints have remained relegated to cult band status, but if there’s one band who’s in that pile for all the wrong reasons it’s Battalion of Saints.

This version of “Second Coming,” one of their best-know songs and the title track to their lone full-length, is actually an early demo version that was later released on a 7″ on Mystic Records. Personally, I prefer the taut power of the version on the Second Coming album, but what this version lacks in polish and tightness it more than makes up for with recklessness and abandon. Just listen to those atonal squeals and squalls from the guitarist during the third(!!!) verse; if they’re there at all on the album version they’re so far back in the mix that you’d never know it. I also love the way the song starts off with a scream; it sort of reminds me of the way that the Zero Boys’ “Vicious Circle” ends with a very similar scream. And while the chorus is a punk rock anthem for sure, for my money the best part of the song is just before the chorus starts when the vocalist screams “right into his hands” right on the staccato beat. Brilliant!

While tracking down original Battalion of Saints vinyl can be a costly endeavor (though it doesn’t have to be; I picked up a spare copy of Second Coming on ebay for 15 dollars just a few days ago), fortunately Taang! Records keeps all the music in print with the Death-R-Us collection, which also includes a few decent tracks from a reunited version of the band called Battalion of Saints AD. If you don’t have all of this band’s recorded works in your collection that CD is highly recommended, as Battalion of Saints were truly one of the greatest bands that hardcore ever produced.

Download Track 27: Battalion of Saints: Second Coming (note: this file may be removed from the server at my discretion)

Back in Commission

Sorry I haven’t written any updates here in quite a while. This past Saturday my friend Billy came down to Chapel Hill to stay for a few days since it’s his spring break. He couldn’t have picked a better weekend to come, as the weather was absolutely brilliant and Chapel Hill was still relatively quiet thanks to it being the last few days of our spring break. We played Dance Dance Revolution, four square, racquetball, FIFA 2002 and all of our other usual activities, and also took advantage of Kelly and my great new location to go on super long bike rides. Billy also came and watched me teach, and while that was a little weird it was cool to share that part of my life with someone.

Next weekend is the big conference that I gave my practice talk for the other week. While I booked my plane tickets weeks ago, for some reason or another I put off booking the hotel until today, and I nearly had a heart attack when I found that every room in Las Vegas that goes for less than $300 per night was already booked for the whole weekend. This pretty much ruined my afternoon; I was alternately furiously typing away at my keyboard searching the internet for hotel rooms and pacing around the room in an exasperated fit. However, eventually I thought to look for youth hostels in Vegas and I actually found one that had private rooms for about $40 per night, which is less than I was going to pay for a hotel. The only catch is that it’s about eight miles from the hotel where the conference is taking place, so I’ll have to arrange transportation to and from that part of town every day. However, I’m happy just to have a place booked, and if a better option opens up in the meantime I can always cancel my hostel reservation as long as it’s more than 24 hours before I’m supposed to be there.

Kelly and I were planning on going up to see my family this weekend for Easter, but it looks like I’m going to have to cancel on them. There is just so much work to do here and I’ve really gotten behind because of taking so much time off to hang out with Billy. Plus I had two very exciting but time-consuming things dropped in my lap over the past few weeks. First of all, we’re hiring a new 18th-century literature faculty member here at UNC and I got asked to take her out to breakfast and keep her company on Monday, so I need to hit the library and check out the books she’s written so that I have some clue about who she is. Secondly, I was asked to help co-author a CD-ROM that accompanies a textbook on visual literacy for a well-known academic press, and we have to throw together the entire thing in 3 months so there’s a lot of work to do with that.

Speaking of 18c happenings in the department, I’ve been feeling really, really good about grad school lately. Ever since I gave that talk I’ve been riding a pretty nice high. Plus, last night I went to a reading by the poet Robert Hass and both of the 18c faculty members who were there (as well as one who retired several years ago) made a point to stop and chat with me for a while, which they hadn’t really done at any of the previous department events. I feel like they’re really welcoming me into their community, and it’s a good feeling to have your work validated in that way.

The World Keeps On Turning…

It seems like a lot of controversial things have happened in the punk scene over the past few days, and while I’m not generally one to comment on things like this I feel the need to talk about a few topics. First off is an incident concerning one of my favorite punk bands of the past few years, the Smut Peddlers. From a TKO Records press release:

As of 03/15/05, the Smut Peddlers European tour is in serious crisis. All it took was this question:

“Nice quote from Thrasher: “Most music magazines are just political propaganda, and the people that write and do interviews are a sorry lot with axes to grind” – strong words. Can you elaborate on this?”

and this answer:

John- “In the United States, it seems like most of the so-called “music” magazines are filled with left-wing political propaganda and not much discussion of music. School teachers and University Professors are predominately leftists. They like to be called “progressive”, which implies that those who disagree with them are REgressive. The universities and schools tend to brainwash the students with Ideas and concepts like “Affirmative Action”, which is institutional racism. The Hollywood entertainment industry is the same way. Journalists and Gay Actors are not representative of America as a whole. I voted for Bush, and he won fair and square. I thought he was better than the alternative. I liked Ronald Reagan, too. So we can’t get a gig at Spaceland. I don’t think politics should be a big deal and so one-sided in the press. If a musician has an opinion and wants to talk about it, fine, but having critics and editors constantly ramming their views down my throat and censoring and editing out opposing views is frustrating, boring, and downright fascist. Maybe it’s different in Europe, but it’s probably even worse.”

…in an interview conducted via email for the editors of Ox Fanzine to (in less than 24 hours) mobilize a boycott of the Smut Peddlers upcoming European tour, on the grounds that they had a “right wing agenda.” Make A Difference (MAD), the booking agency handling the tour immediately caved under the pressure and cancelled the tour, ending what had been a positive, successful business relationship with the band. MAD’s explanation for this move was:

“There is a discussion going on in the European press and media about an interview given by a band member to a fanzine. We don´t want to apology for any bands statements.”

In a follow-up press release (they put out three over the course of a few hours), someone argued that the Smut Peddlers are not a political band, something I found a little silly given the fact that I’ve been noticing the conservative bent in their lyrics for a long time. Actually, I had an interview planned with the Smut Peddlers many moons ago, but for some reason or another it never happened; a shame, as DFB’s name could be put out there in all this press rather than Thrasher’s. Oh well.

The reason I reproduced this press release, though, is to talk about how uncomfortable with the punk scene seems to be with any kind of political controversy, something I think is indicative of the way things are going in the world at large as well. In fact, a scholar recently gave a talk on just this subject for UNC; she argued that our culture no longer values controversy, only consensus, the truth of which I think is borne out by the recent moves to eliminate filibustering in the senate. The real danger of this attidue is that it fosters intellectual stagnation; increasingly we are trained to simply give up on any hope of achieving a compromise if such a compromise isn’t immediately apparent. If you can’t compromise, then you have to just pick one side and stick with it (wouldn’t want to be a flip-flopper, now would you?). However, most of the time the slate of options is reduced to two—left and right wing—when often these platforms don’t even seem coherent. Why, exactly, does a conservative believe that in all matters related to money that the government should take a laissez-faire attitude, but when it comes to other types of behavior (such as, say, what happens in a person’s bedroom) the government should be extremely invasive? Why do liberals preach values like open-mindedness and acceptance and then argue for strict economic protectionism and against the evils of “shipping jobs overseas?” These should be things that every person has to work through for him or herself, not things that are dictated by political organizations or the media.

Second on the docket is this story from punknews.org about mega-distributor Lumberjack buying other mega-distributor Mordam. This seems like a little slice of the current fad for media consolidation finding its way into the punk scene, and I think most people will lose out in this arrangement. The fewer channels there are for getting music from record labels to record stores the less diversity you’ll probably see on the shelf of your local record store. Perhaps I’m wrong, but something seems very, very fishy about this deal to me.

Finally, here’s a slightly less dire (well, at least for everyone except the person involved) tidbit from this week’s Warprayer newsletter:

Once upon a time a reviewer received a demo from a band called %&§=?/.
He didn’t like their stuff at all, so he wrote a really unpleasant
analysis and publicized it on his website about 1+ year ago. Nothing
happened until now, but this morning the aforementioned critic was
called up by the law enforcement in order to come to the police station
because he got officially accused by %&§=?/ for the following crimes:
1.) “Insult”,
2.) “Defamation”,
3.) “Agitation against %&§=?/”,
4.) “Using their copyrighted artwork (a cover…) without asking” and
5.) “Publishing their contact address without asking”.
The reviewer couldn’t believe his ears, thought it was a joke, but drove
to the police station where he was told that %&§=?/ really placed a
private application against him. Now the request is in the hands of the
public prosecutor’s office…
What’s the moral of this fairytale:
1.) Always be civilized!
2.) Don’t criticize anyone – never!
3.) Enjoy everything!
4.) Every crappy demo is a masterpiece!
5.) If you don’t like a record, refuse to review it!
6.) But if you do so, tell the untruth as best as you can!
7.) Ask every (!!) band if it’s okay to use their cover or contact
address – even they (!!) sent the stuff!
Or
KEEP LAUGHING!!!

Now, this happened in Germany and not the US, but I could see it happening just as easily here. It amazes me that some bands get so pissed off about the reviews they get; I’m in a band and I realize we’re not great, and even though it might be hurtful if someone told me that, I’m aware that you have to respect someone’s opinion when you ask them to be honest, something I think every band or record label implicitly does when they send a record to a zine for review. I don’t have anything enlightening to say on this matter, but I will say this: GROW UP YOU WHINY FUCKS!

Back Home

Kelly and I are back home from our short trip to California. Actually, we’ve been back since Wednesday evening but for one reason or another I haven’t felt like writing in this blog. Judging by the relative lack of blogging activity while I was gone it seems like not a lot of people have felt like writing in their blogs lately. It makes me wonder if the whole blogging thing is just a fad; I’m not sure whether some new form of communication will sweep it away or if it’ll just dry up and crumble away from the virtual landscape, but one thing’s for sure: blogging isn’t as hot as it was just a few months ago.

I’m thinking about this because I’m in the process of writing a summary of what I teach in my blogging-based writing course. Every year the English department hands out a couple of awards for assignments they think are particularly good, and this year I’m putting mine in the running. However, I’m disturbed by the fact that after the election the wind really got sucked from blogging’s sails. A lot of people thought that blogging was going to win the election for the Democrats, and when it didn’t a lot of those people got discouraged and stopped logging on. Then (always very astute about new, easily manipulated forms of media) the conservatives came out from their hovels and took over the blogging scene. Nowadays when I browse Blog Explosion the right-wing political blogs outnumber the left-wingers at least 4-to-1. Though maybe this is comparable to the way that everyone in the world is a Red Sox fan nowadays since they won the World Series last year.

Enough about that; I’m sure you all want to hear about my trip. In a word, it was excellent. The main purpose of the trip was a trip-within-a-trip to Big Bear lake for some snowboarding. At every other mountain I’ve been to skiers have outnumbered snowboarders by a fairly significant margin, but at Big Bear it was the other way around, mostly thanks (I’m sure) to the amazing terrain parks. Not quite having the skill to do anything with the half pipe or most of the very large jumps on the mountain I just avoided most of the obstacles, which was in itself pretty hard given that there was barely 50 feet between most of the jumps, turning your normal downhill run into a slalom course. Another nice thing was that they had miniature terrain parks for those of us who are still learning the craft, so by the time I quit late in the second day I could get a couple of feet of air off of the smaller, 8-10 foot ramps.

In addition to making it out to Big Bear we also took a short trip to LA, pretty much exclusively so that I could visit the record stores. Amoeba Records is, as I remember, one of humanity’s crowning achievements: a Wal-Mart-sized record store that I could easily kill 8-10 hours in. Unfortunately, though, I only had about two hours, but I still managed a few good finds. Then I got an even more measily fifteen minutes at Headline Records, probably my second-easiest place I’ve been to to score great records besides Discourage Records in Portland. I think I bought sixteen LPs and a handful of 7″s, so you’ll no doubt be seeing those all documented one-by-one at the bottom of the menu on the right-hand side of this page.

Today I’m locking myself in my study in order to complete some long-overdue work. My best friend since I was like 12 years old is coming into town for a few days tomorrow and my friend Eric may be coming down to NC to hang out tonight, so I need to stop blogging and start getting some work done.

Forward to Death

It struck me earlier today that I hadn’t written about the band in some time. While a lack of updates on something is usually a sign that it has fizzled when you’re talking about my ever-busy fingers, things have actually been coming along with the band quite nicely. While we haven’t practiced every week we’ve been sticking to a pretty good schedule and it’s starting to pay off. Plus, we’re finally starting to develop a sound. When we started it was all about trying to play as fast as we could, but over the past few practices (mostly because of the last few songs I’ve written) an early California punk vibe has crept in that we couldn’t ignore. So, we’ve just decided to go with it and have even re-worked some of our old songs so they sound more like us and less like us trying to be COC or the Faith or whoever we were trying to be early on.

Our songs have also been getting increasingly more complex over the past few practices. While most of my first songs were just verse/chorus/verse/chorus/end, we’ve been mixing things up quite a bit, not just adding intros and outros but putting in all sorts of little breaks in the middle of songs, sometimes in very unexpected places. At the beginning I was very concerned that all of this was going to be too much, but I think I’m finally starting to learn that giving songs space to breathe can make some really interesting things happen.

Yesterday we wrote another new song (we’ve been on a pretty steady pace of one new song per practice). I brought the riff in hearing a Neos-type ultra-fast, spastic hardcore vibe in my head, but the first few times we played it things just weren’t working out. Robert suggesting slowing things down and adding the California-type rock swing that our other stuff has been developing and things came together very quickly after that. The song starts with a spastic, Circle Jerks-style drum beat, and rather than stick a guitar solo right after the second chorus (as we did on one of our other songs) Dennis wrote a weird little abbreviated thing that sounds kind of like United Mutation and we stuck it in between one of the verses and the chorus, which sounds really unexpected and cool. I’m not quite as happy with this newest song as I have been with my last few, but it’ll definitely do.

This morning when I woke up I combed through all of our practice tapes to date, took the best take we had of each song and compiled them into a little band-only demo. Our recordings have been coming out really, really well, so hopefully if I play it for a few people it’ll catch someone’s ear and we can find ourselves a singer. With six songs and something like eight and a half minutes of music we’re nearing enough for a full set, so it feels silly to keep writing and writing without putting any work into finding a singer.

USHC Mix Track 26: Condemned to Death

San Francisco’s Condemned to Death started in 1983 in the world-famous “vats,” an abandoned San Francisco brewery that was taken over by punk squatters and housed several legendary punk bands like DRI, MDC and Verbal Abuse. They quickly recorded a 7″ for R Radical Records, from which this track, “Media Control,” is taken.

“Media Control” is a straightforward blast of barreling hardcore that is pure 1983. Bands like Poison Idea, MDC and early DRI can’t help but come to mind, as Condemned to Death shared the same philosophy of stripping down hardcore to its barest elements, sacrificing most any sense of melody or musical sophistication to the almighty god of the rhythm section. The separate parts of “Media Control” all seem to fade together, only the choral chant “Media Control” being distinctive enough rise from the muck. However, despite its white noise-esque quality, “Media Control” still holds up and stomps most recent hardcore bands into the ground.

All of Condemned to Death’s recorded material was collected on a CD on Grand Theft Audio called You Can’t Kill a Vatrat.

Download Track 26: Condemned to Death: Media Control (note: this file may be removed from the server at my discretion)