American Steel / Punk Reunions

I am bewildered by the string of recent posts on punknews.org and similar sites about the reformation of American Steel. I remember seeing this band play on my 21st birthday and being wild about their 1st and 2nd LPs. However, no one (besides me, apparently) gave a shit about them at the time, so they COMPLETELY sold out and formed some kind of Faint-esque dance-punk band called Communique. When said venture failed they got the old punk band together and now all of a sudden people care… really? I don’t know these guys or anything, but a glance at their biography makes their return to punk rock seem entirely dubious.

It seems that nowadays the shortest path to success in the punk scene is to put out a halfway decent record or two, break up for a couple of years and come back to thousands of new fans pretending like they were into you the first time around. Case in point: Lifetime. I actually think they were a decent band on their last 2 LPs, but their breakup gave them a mystique that made them seem WAY more important than they ever were. This fascination with reunions is even more pervasive in the hardcore scene… in my own distro the most obscure reissues of 80s records sell better than all but a very few new releases. I also remember Aston from Boss Tuneage telling me that his Exit Condition reissue CD was one of his best sellers of recent years, selling WAY more than any releases by new bands. I fucking LOVE Exit Condition, but seriously who are the people buying all these things and why don’t they give a shit about current bands? Maybe Cross Laws can do a reunion tour when Dennis gets out of the Peace Corps in 2009 and we’ll get in on this action.

In a completely unrelated note, out of curiosity I downloaded the new Against Me! album. I was prepared to really like it, but with the exception of “White People for Peace” (which I think is a pretty amazing song) it kind of blows. Consider yourself informed.

Another unrelated note: mine is currently the default pic on the infamous Budweiser sweater myspace page. Score!

A Public Service Announcement

References to Corrosion of Conformity in any written media attempting to describe, review or otherwise assess or promote the Raleigh, North Carolina hardcore band DOUBLE NEGATIVE are hereby banned. That shit is completely played out; COC has and had absolutely nothing to do with Double Negative. Instead of thinking that Double Negative are going to fulfill your adolescent wishes of COC, you need to realize that Double Negative will fulfill your middle-age dreams of seeing fucking Double Negative. So, just to spell things out for you:

Unacceptable band comparisons for Double Negative:

• COC

Extremely played-out and borderline irrelevant band comparisons for Double Negative:

• Subculture
• Scared Straight

Appropriate band comparisons for Double Negative:

• Discharge
• Monster Magnet (I know for a fact they have heavily influenced Justin’s bass sound)
• Void
• Venom
• Tiny Tim (as long as not reference to Poison Idea’s Feel the Darkness LP is contained therein)

That is all. Please follow these instructions and you won’t embarrass yourself.

R.I.P. Chelsea from Paintbox / Death Side

Normally I don’t repost quote unquote “news” stories, but it is truly amazing to me how little this is being talked about. A few days ago one of the greatest punk guitarists of all time passed away. If you heard Death Side then you are probably obsessed with Death Side, and that obsession is probably centered on Chelsea’s guitar playing. Randy Uchida from G.I.S.M. may have pioneered the awkward combination of Fast Eddie Clarke from Motorhead’s rhythmic sense and Iron Maiden’s grandiose lead play that is the signature trademark of “Burning Spirits” style Japanese hardcore, but Chelsea is the man who ultimately molded those influences into something totally fluid, natural and indeed beautiful. His work with Death Side (which, amazingly for a band that did as many records as they did, actually got better with every release) is genre-defining, but his follow-up band Paintbox was just as good. In this band Chelsea’s lead guitar took a less prominent place in the mix, with the guitarist concentrating on making some of the catchiest riffs I’ve ever heard in punk rock. Just as Death Side combined metal and punk so seamlessly, Paintbox integrated pop melodies into the Burning Spirits style in a way that probably would have been corny and lame in anyone else’s hands.

Though I haven’t read any independent confirmation of this, word is that Chelsea died from a heat-related illness. Apparently, the combination of heavy drinking and a lack of air conditioning in his home proved lethal. What a terrible story…

By the way, as a tangential end-note to this post, I’ve been waiting for days to see news of Chelsea’s death on punknews.org, but they still haven’t posted a story. This supposedly punk site reports on the new Foo Fighters album and notes every move of every shitty emo band out there, but they remain oblivious to the passing of one of punk’s greatest musical forces. It’s not that I expect that site to be the punkest thing on the planet, but it makes me wonder why I still read it.

Effigies on NPR

My love for NPR has been documented before on this site, but I thought this deserved special mention. I was going through my podcasts at the gym today and, much to my surprise, the Effigies were the featured band on Sound Opinions! In case you haven’t heard it, Sound Opinions is a quote unquote “rock n roll talk show” hosted by Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot, two longtime rock critics currently based on Chicago. I’m completely addicted to this show even though at times I hate it. Mostly, I think Derogatis and Kot are both guilty of that rock critic problem of reading about music more than they actually listen to it (a probably I often have myself), but despite my qualms with the show I still listen every week.

Anyway, this past week their guests were the Effigies, who played a live version of “Mob Clash” from the Haunted Town EP (which was honestly a bit tepid, but you have to cut bands some slack on live-in-the-studio performances) and a song from their new LP that sounded really, really good to me. They also talked with the band quite a bit about the history of Chicago punk. Click here to go to the Sound Opinions web page; the show in question is #88. Note also that there’s a little piece about Naked Raygun at the end of the show as well.

Back from Japan

Well, I’m back from Japan. Actually, I’ve been back for about 2 days now but I haven’t really had time to think about the blog. There are so many things to do when you get back from a trip like this… in fact, I’m still feeling very swamped and overwhelmed, so I apologize if you’re one of the many people whom I owe a phone call or an email.

The trip was, as you can imagine, amazing. It was very different from last year’s trip, partly because I knew a little more about what to expect and partly because we were visiting different parts of the country. This seems obvious in retrospect, but Tokyo is very, very different from the rest of Japan. Only going there is sort of like going to New York and thinking you’ve seen the United States. Sure, New York is American, but it’s also completely bizarre and almost like its own country. Tokyo is exactly the same way. I would love to live in a city like Tokyo, New York or London one day. Hopefully I have chosen a profession where that’s a feasible possibility.

Now that I’m home I wish I could lock myself in my room and binge on records for the next 2 weeks, but I have a ton of work to do. I got so many good records, it’s ridiculous. A lot of it was things I already know well but didn’t have on vinyl, but there are a lot of records that I’m not that familiar with and can’t wait to immerse myself in, like the Los Violadores LP, the Bones LP, the Swankys, etc. I also got a lot of new Japanese CDs I’m excited about, like the new DSB album (the guitar player is now handling vocals, which I’m skeptical about), the G-Zet Discography CD, the Ghoul Discography and the new Nightmare / Burial / Crude 3-way split. Clearly I have a lot of listening in front of me.

While I was gone the first Sorry State release from a Japanese band arrived, and I’m very excited. They’re called Bored to Death, they’re from Sapporo City and they sound a lot like 1st EP-era Government Issue or the Formaldehyde Junkies. In addition to being my first Japanese band, this was also the first record for which I did a full-color layout. The record looks and sounds awesome… I’m really excited about it. I also have new 7″s by Cross Laws and Crossed Eyes which should be out in early September, so I’m not sure whether I’ll put the Bored to Death record in the webstore before those come out or not. I definitely won’t be doing distro orders until all 3 records are out. After that there’ll be a new 7″ from Double Negative and the long-awaited Raleigh comp 7″, and some other things are already in the planning stages. Very exciting indeed.

OK, that’s all for now I think. I have no idea what I’ll be posting here over the next few days/weeks. I’ll probably be reviewing some of the new Japanese releases and maybe posting some other things as they come up. Aside from Cross Laws’ last show on September 1 there aren’t a lot of shows coming up around here, so don’t expect too much on that front.

Japan So Far…

No time for writing a drawn out post, so here are some things that have happened:

• slept in a capsule hotel for 2 nights in Tokyo; the actual room wasnt too bad and it would have been a pleasurable experience if it werent for the amazing amount of protocol at these places
• Mt. Fuji was one of the worst experiences of my life. I walked around Tokyo for an entire day, then boarded a bus that dropped me off halfway up Mt. Fuji at 11PM. Hiked through the night, alone and in the rain, arriving at the summit at 5AM just in time to watch a thoroughly underwhelming sunrise. Made it back to the bottom at 8AM only to have to take a series of 7 trains and buses in order to arrive at Nagoya by 8PM. I didnt sleep and barely ate the whole time due to altitude sickness. Fuck Mt. Fuji.
• Kenji and Saori of Answer Records are two of the coolest people I have ever met in my life.
• Record scores are plentiful yet again, but this time the shops are strangely devoid of Japanese gems. Ive been stocking up on European and US stuff instead… best scores so far are the Unseen Force LP (so weird to find this in a shop in Tokyo…), the Mad 1st EP, FUs 1st LP on X-claim, Los Violadores LP and too many other things to count.
• Kyoto-style ice cream rules

OK, thats all for now. Theres free internet at the Ryokan where Im staying in Kyoto so perhaps Ill post again soon.