A Night Of Tears Followed By A Night Of Rage

     Around 9:30pm this past Friday (3/22/2019), the status quo held strong when the verdict of not guilty came back from the jury in the trial involving the murder of Antwon Rose II.

     The prospects of a positive outcome were not high to begin with but once it was announced that the jury was being put together out of town that pretty much sealed it.  Especially when the jury was handed the case on a Friday afternoon.  Deliberate for a few hours on Friday night and they could be home by lunchtime on Saturday.

     I was shaking with anger and sadness to the point where I was unable to tie my shoes when I was about to hit the streets and figured it would be best for all involved if I wasn't out on the roads driving around.  I was left to checking in with the internet every so often as I was yelling at my television.

     The local television coverage could be boiled down to scared white news anchors sounding the alarm to scared white viewers to not leave their suburban houses.  Describing peaceful protests and marching as riots.  Aw, what a shame a bunch of gentrifying colonizers had their overpriced dinners interrupted and had to sit in traffic for a few minutes.  At least they made it home to their families.

     One of the local political analysts went so far as to say that protesting was not the solution and that people should put their energies into voting.  I guess this political starfucker never thought that it was possible for people to do two things.  He might want to check the bottoms of his shoes before he goes into the house because he really stepped in it this time.

     Protests are gatherings of like minded people.  This can lead to organizing.  Organizing can lead to people running for office or ballot initiatives to change laws.  Ask our new state representatives Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato.  They are proof of this very basic civics lesson that a political “editor” that gets paid to talk for a living should know.

     Protesting is one part of a multifaceted approach to wrenching power away from the pigfuckers. Said pigfuckers will never cede power if we simply say “please” based solely on the fact that they don't want to share.  That's why there will always be pleas for civility and decorum.  When being called on their bullshit they will always say that we are being impolite when doing so.

     The local bigots came out in force in online comment sections.  Courageous bunch they are. Smart, too.  Wondering why the people marching in the streets weren't at work when it was a student organized walkout.

     Luckily, Punk Rock saved the day.  Killer Of Sheep was playing a show up in Cleveland and I had been dragging my feet on making the decision whether to make the trip or not.  The events happening around town pushed me over the edge and northward up the highway.  It felt good to get out of town and leave some of the weight behind for a few hours.

     The venue was a place called Mulberry's which was an indoor volleyball/basketball facility with plastic sports tile for flooring.  There was a pizza place/bar in the upstairs so at least there were food options on site since we were located under a bridge with nothing else in the area.

     Mulberry's certainly had the vibe of an early Fugazi show since it looked like the gym in a middle school.  Other folks felt like they were at a school dance and I guess some part of me did as well since I found myself standing along one of the sidewalls for most of the night.

     The lineup was Minority Threat, MAAFA, Soul Glo, Killer Of Sheep and For Your Health.  For Your Health was up first.  They were from the Columbus, OH area and looked to be a rather young band.  If they keep at it, in a few years they could end up being quite formidable.  Sound wise, For Your Health had a very post-hardcore/At The Drive-In thing going on which even At The Drive-In can't seem to do anymore.  I was halfway down the turnpike on my way home when I realized that I forgot to pick up the singles that they had at the merch table.

     Killer Of Sheep went on second and provided the catharsis that I sorely needed.  They hit stage and went off like a bomb.  I guess they were feeling the same weight that I was.  The band's usual fury had a little extra on the attack this time around.

     The band caught a friendly hail of boos from the crowd during the intro to “Firewater” when Ollie compared Flint, MI to the equally polluted cities of Pittsburgh and Cleveland by saying, “Your river actually caught on fire, once.”  Apparently, the people of Cleveland are still a little sensitive about that.

     Fortunately, Greg The Drummer decided to use his own kit.  The drums that were provided seemed awful small and he would have ended up walking right through the kit.  There wasn't much for the kick drum to dig into so it kept taking off on him.  This kept Ollie immobilized since he had to keep one foot planted in front of the drum to keep it in place.

     Helping the band load in, set up, tear down and load out was definitely healthy for the psyche.  I was able to focus on the task at hand and get out of my head for a while.  Lugging drums and amps got me right down to the lizard brain of “make the show work” and all of my other concerns and issues fell to the wayside.

     Third on the bill was Soul Glo, from Philadelphia.  The first time I encountered this band was back in November of 2017 at the Mr. Roboto Project for Anti-Flag’s Anti-Fest.  I was floored immediately back then and Saturday night was no different.  Soul Glo is one of those bands that gives me confidence that the future of Punk Rock is in good hands.  Even with a drummer that was filling in, they didn't skip a beat and tore it up for the length of their set.  I can't wait until they put out a new record.

     Hailing from New York and up fourth was, MAAFA.  The band's singer, Flora Lucini, describes the band as Afro-Progressive Hardcore.  And dammit, if she wasn't right about that.  The songs were tight and the arrangements had more density to them than run of the mill hardcore.

     MAAFA was certainly the pleasant surprise of the night.  Their drummer had the kind of swing that made me want to put him in a time machine to go up against Coltrane on Elvin Jones' night off.

     The headliner and organizer of the evening was Minority Threat.  They put the show together as a release party for an EP.  I crossed paths with Minority Threat several months ago on Bandcamp off of a recommendation from former Vice/Noisey writer, and current labor rabble rouser, Kim Kelly.  I was an instant fan of the band and had to pick my jaw up off of the floor when they started playing shows with Killer Of Sheep every now and then.  This was the first time that I was able to make it out to see them and Minority Threat did not disappoint.

     Minority Threat has an approach that would fall in the category of unfuckwithable.  They were the perfect band to bring the night to a close with a burst of energy to get me back on the road.

     There was a complete and total lack of bullshit attitudes throughout the course of the night and a groundswell of positivity.  If that's where Punk Rock is heading, I can't wait to get there with it.

Here are links for those who may be interested:

Minority Threat

MAAFA

Soul Glo

Killer Of Sheep

For Your Health

Punk Rock Secret Origin Files

     The first real rock show that I ever went to was to see Helmet and the Rollins Band at Metropol on August 17^th, 1994.  This was at a time when I was completely unaware of Punk Rock and knew absolutely nothing about the music that would later come to save my life on more than one occasion.

     At that point, and for the next few years, the local Modern Rock station was still informing me on the music of the day.  I had no idea how limiting that was especially since it was around the time of the great Clear Channel takeover of Pittsburgh.  I knew there was this world of underground music but did not know how to access it from the bubble that I was living in.

     I would see flyers for shows stuck on phone poles while on the bus to school but had never heard of the places where these shows were held or how I would get there if I did.  I was stuck going to larger club shows and outdoor shows where there was always a barrier between the bands and the crowd.

     Pittsburgh has always been a tough town for all ages shows due to the archaic liquor laws in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  This made it rather difficult for me when I was underage to see any local bands that were worth their salt or any smaller touring bands since they would always end up playing at bars or clubs that were always more interested in selling booze than music.  And how dare a person under the age of twenty-one express an interest in seeing live music.  The best I could hope for was the Sunday night, all ages, grab bag of bands at The Electric Banana.  And that was always a tough sled.  For seven dollars, one could see a handful of different bands all playing their first or second show.

     I went to a few shows at the Banana to see people I went to high school with play to varying degrees of success.  And by success I mean that all of the band members showed up so they were able to play and then managed to make it through each song they tried to play.  As awful as those nights were on the ears, those shows were the first time I saw that no one needed to ask permission from a grown up to play in a band beyond calling up the club and asking for a spot on the calendar.

     As for house or basement shows, I didn't even know that was a thing that could be done let alone finding out where and when they happened.  In order to do that I would have needed to have had friends that knew the people that put those shows together.  I didn't have any friends to begin with.  I had no real friends at school and I lived in an isolated, dying neighborhood with no one around my age that cared about anything but sports and throwing rocks at each other.

     Living in a house where I grew up with the “seen and not heard” philosophy of parenting to go along with a mountain of Catholic guilt that has been passed down from generation to generation, nothing creative was even remotely encouraged.  I'm not even sure what I was expected to do with my free time when I was a kid other than sit quietly and stare at the walls.  Having anything to do with music would have been seen as foreign and forbidden.  Not only would it have been considered going down a path towards temptation or some silly bullshit, it made noise and would disturb the king of the castle so even listening to music was a difficult thing to do.  Creativity was seen as abnormal and would not lead to a life of being employed as a cog in the capitalist machine. So of course when I crossed paths with Punk Rock, I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

     Since growing up well adjusted wasn't in the cards, most of my social interactions would end in alienation and me sitting by myself in a corner.  Trying to fit in just to make friends always backfired with similar results.  As I started scratching the surface of Punk Rock, I started realizing that this music was being made by people that didn't fit in either and their music was their statement of rejecting the rejection.   Not fitting in was alright and there was nothing wrong with being an outsider. This music had started me down the path of being myself and not caring if anyone else was okay with that or not.

     My first serious pipeline into Punk Rock came from a chance meeting of one of my sister's friends at a Butthole Surfers show at the local outdoor “amphitheater” which was really just a fenced off portion of parking lot with a stage at the end.  After that, he had a new show buddy and I had a new source for music because of the tapes he would hand me when he'd swing by to pick me up.

     These tapes and shows were my first encounters with Nick Cave, the Melvins and other less palatable types of music that had no chance of airplay on the local stations.  Even though I wore these tapes out they still sit in a box with the ticket stubs from the shows we went to.

     Around the same time that I found employment at a sandwich shop, the record store that became my dealer opened down the street from it.  Brave New World was located at 406 S. Craig St, in Oakland.  After my shift of slinging ham on rye, I'd stagger down the street and hand over damn near my entire paycheck.  That's where I slowly started to amass my collection of Stooges, Clash, Ramones, Motorhead and Black Sabbath records.  My curiosity knew no bounds.  Anytime Spahr and Robbie, the guys that ran the store, would say “Hey, you might want to check this record out,” I would take it home and give it a listen.

     More importantly, Brave New World was where I was able to pick up the records of all those local bands that I saw on the flyers while my bus was stuck in traffic.  Aus-Rotten, Submachine, Anti-Flag and countless others.  The records that these bands put out were further evidence that you didn't have to ask permission to put something that you created out into the world.  These bands were from my town and they were putting out records and getting in the van to go from town to town playing shows.  These were things that I would never have the courage to do because of my anxieties, depression and inability to get out of my own way.

     It was also around this time that one of my coworkers told me that he was in a band and asked if I would want to go see them play the next time they had an all ages show.  This was my introduction to the metal band Crayon-Death.  When I saw the band play the first time, I couldn't quite wrap my head around what they were doing due to the awful PA that was in the club so I didn't really have a reaction to what was going on.

     A few weeks later, I was given a tape with a handful of song demos that would eventually end up on their album Three Sixteen.  I put the tape in when I got home and as soon as it ended I flipped it over and listened again.  By the end of the night, I ended up making another copy of the tape to listen to knowing full well that I would wear out the original.  I was hooked.  I went from not knowing how things got made to possessing music that had not been released yet and was still being refined.  And on top of that, the songs sounded really good to my angry, teenage ears.

     By the time the band called it quits, I was lugging gear, taking photos and recording their shows with a Mini-Disc recorder.  Working for that band in a limited capacity got me on the other side of the barrier and I wanted more.  But then life got in the way.

     I didn't have enough money to leave town for a writing school out West and then the sandwich shop job went away while I was trying to save up to get out of here.  Into the capitalist pit I went, taking a day job in an office just to stop the parental nagging that would occur on every encounter all because doing something different or being different would never be understood.

     I would still work a show here and there if someone I knew needed a hand but the days of heading out three or four nights a week to clubs and bars were over.  The next thing I knew, it was twenty years later and I was a single parent with a mortgage.  Living the American Nightmare of work-sleep-work-sleep until I die of boredom from a low to no impact existence.

     Through all of the ups and downs, the records kept spinning.  I can credit the voice of Joe Strummer for single handedly getting me through the long, hard slog of navigating the family court system.  I even listened to his solo album Earthquake Weather on more than one occasion and that record is a tough listen.

     Punk Rock has always been there for me.  Even now, as I'm entering what I am sure is a mid-life crisis.  Instead of buying a sports car or a motorcycle as some people do when they freak out and start panicking after having noticed a large chunk of their life has evaporated into the ether, I picked up a camera to drag out to shows with me so I can start taking pictures of bands again.  And now that I have invested a large amount of money in this enterprise, I have more motivation to get off of the couch in order to justify buying the goddamn thing.

     Breaking the long held habit of limping into the house after traffic has its way with me and then allowing the depression to win until it's time to head back into traffic in the morning has been proving rather difficult.  That's why I am eternally grateful for the sonic onslaught that is Killer Of Sheep.  I will try to see that band whenever I can.  And luckily, Submachine still plays on a regular basis which is even more incentive to leave the house.  This town will never understand how fortunate we are to have two heavyweight bands such as them.  But then again, they're not one hit wonder cover bands so the majority in Pittsburgh wouldn't be able to grasp the concept.

     Having come to the long overdue conclusion that the nine to five world was not for me, I picked up the pen again and started creating on my own.  Getting out to shows when I can so I have something to write about other than the bizarre interactions that I have while in an office environment.

     Locked into the corporate life out of financial responsibility was making me physically ill and I could feel my mind rotting away.  Sitting around and waiting for the next day to be a repeat of the one before became intolerable.  It was time to stop waiting for me to give myself permission, to get out of my own way.  To stop staring at the walls and find some sort of creative outlet.  I've got a house full of records and books that were created by people that had something that they wanted to say.

     I'm not sure what will come of it, if anything, but I'll keep writing even if I can't tell if the words are any good.  I don't even know if people have the attention span to read anything anymore.  But none of that matters, I'll keep writing because I have to.  Toiling away in my tiny corner of the internet just to prove to myself that I'm still alive.

     The bands, the music and the places where it happened might not mean much to most people and can be seen as disposable but they carry a lot of weight with me.  Some people “grow up” and leave Punk Rock behind relegating it to the dust bin of so called childish things.  That's alright.  I'll pick up the slack for them and that means more records for me.  If there is ever a day that Singles Going Steady by the Buzzcocks doesn't sound like home to me, that will be the day that I start worrying about my personal well-being.

     Punk Rock has always been the armor that I use to get through my day to day which has been taken out of my control.  Now I use it as motivation to take back some semblance of control and put something of my own back into the world.

Hendrix Is Not On Harp Tonight

     I had a rather weird encounter with the mail the other day.  Instead of coming home from day job to find an LP mailer stuck in the door, I came across an envelope from a relative.

     Given the age of digital wonder in which we live, getting a letter in the mail these days has become a bit of a rarity so I thought it would have been an invitation to some sort of family gathering that I would decide to not go to in order to avoid standing in a corner by myself because I haven't had anything to say to these people since the age of seven.  Boy, was I wrong.

     It was an invitation of sorts.  The letter was two pages, typed, on heavy grade paper that was almost card stock and it was trying to convince me to come to white, European Jesus.

     The letter was asking how I could live without Jesus/God and still find purpose in life without the goal of an afterlife.  It then took an odd twist toward the biographical as if I had never met this person before.  There were a few bible quotes and lines from modern day snake oil salesmen type preachers. The big finish was to promote Christian radio stations and websites for me to seek out more information.

     I should have known that something was amiss during the last gauntlet of holidays that I had to run through.  I was given a book that laid out the “empirical evidence” that Jesus was in fact the son of God.  I guess the book would have been helpful if I were looking for “evidence” based on a premise that is flimsy, at best.

     With the limited amount of time in my day that I can set aside for reading, am I going to read this book or am I going to read something of my own choosing?  Jesus book or the next volume in The Dune Chronicles?  The choice seems clear to me.  But rather than let a book go to waste, the pages were removed from the spine and used as my first attempt at an art project.  Lemons to lemonade, I say.

     The thing is, I really don't care about religion at all.  If you find comfort in it and religion of some sort helps you get through your day to day, fine, good for you.  It never did a thing for me so I don't dedicate head space to it in any shape or form.

     I have never been offended by someone that practices a religion unless they come at me with bullshit like this.  The “come join us” routine really pisses me off.

     I don't go around asking people how they can be a grown ass adult and still believe in magic and fairy tales.  I'd like to think in return that I would not be asked why, as a grown ass adult, I don't believe in magic and fairy tales.

     I understand that some people go to religious services to feel a sense of community.  I get it. People want to get out of the house and feel like they belong somewhere.  I hate people and want nothing to do with them so I have no use for that sense of community.

     I have other shit to do throughout the course of my day than worry about if I'm going to be rewarded with a Scooby Snack when I die.  Acting decently toward our fellow humans should not be based on winning a prize when we all inevitably shit our pants and die at some point.  You do it because you should.

     I refuse to align myself with people that actively stand opposed to the majority of the rest of the population.  Historically, Christianity seems to come down on the side of hate, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny and let's not forget protecting child molesters.  They have a very “If you're not like us, then we're against you” way of doing business.  Why would I stand with that?

     TV preachers demonstrate the humility of Jesus by bilking millions of dollars off of their poor followers every Sunday so they can build stadium sized churches and buy private jets.  Why would I want to be a part of that?  Becoming an easily manipulated follower that will act against my own best interests is not something that piques my curiosity.

     Jesus never helped me out of a bind.  He doesn't go from town to town getting people out of jams like B.J. and the Bear.  Praying to an imaginary friend doesn't solve problems.  Analysis of a problem followed by action is what will solve that problem.  When someone was coming after me for my child and everything I owned, Jesus didn't show up to save the day.  I did that with the help of my friends, family and attorney.  Why would I give that credit away when I could use it as motivation to build myself back up?

     Now I'm in the position of having to figure out how to politely tell this person to fuck off and that I am not their special project in need of “saving.”  Maybe their wondering about how I get through my day without the need of a religion is actually their own existential crisis that they need to figure out without dragging me into it.

     Again, I have to take into consideration that there are more years behind us than there are in front of us.  There will be difficult times in the future where we might need to be there for each other so I won't cut this person out for the simple fact that we are family.  But if this nonsense continues, I'm not sure I'll be able to hold on to that approach.

     And here I was thinking that I didn't have anything to write about this week.

Never Mind The Sex Pistols, Here's Everything Else

     I have yet to figure out why everyone points to the Sex Pistols as some sort of standard bearer for Punk Rock.  I don't see them as anything but a band that ruined the party for every other band that was trying to get started around the same time.

     Their manager, Malcolm McLaren, and John Lydon (a.k.a Johnny Rotten) wanted nothing other than to provoke a reaction out of people.   Not a reaction out of fans but out of the populace at large. Having interviews that were more interesting than the music on the stage.  Mostly because the shows were always getting cancelled and when they did happen the band would implode on stage and the show would end in a hail of garbage and bottles thrown by the audience.  This publicity over substance approach led to promoters and venues staying away from anything that was labeled “Punk.”

     Evidence of this is the removal of Glen Matlock as bass player of the band.  Sid Vicious was brought in to replace him because Sid had a better look to him.  Never mind the fact that Sid Vicious didn't know how to play bass at the time.  Whenever I do listen to the Sex Pistols, I always reach for the Spunk bootleg which is a collection of early demos that were recorded when Matlock was still in the band.  The songs have an urgency and rawness that feels like it's missing on Never Mind The Bollocks.  The main reason that I still give their records a listen is because Steve Jones is one hell of a guitar player.

     The only positive thing that came out of the Sex Pistols was the amount of bands that started because of them.  When they played their first show in Manchester, there were future members of the Buzzcocks and Joy Division in the room at the time.

     There were so many other bands that were so much better than the Sex Pistols that never got the recognition they deserved because of the scorched earth policy of the Sex Pistols.  The Lurkers, Pseudo Existors, 999 and so many other bands were left to the dust bin of history because they couldn't book shows in the aftermath of McLaren's search and destroy mission for attention from the press.  Luckily, bands like The Clash, The Damned and UK Subs were able to separate themselves from this mess and find varying levels of success.  If it wasn't for reissue labels that are run by people that love this music, some of these bands would be forgotten completely.

     Lydon's post Sex Pistols routine of slagging other bands that came after them is more than irritating.  He always claimed that Southern California punk bands were all a bunch of spoiled rich kids playing pretend.  The thing that he never seemed to realize was that bands like Black Flag and Bad Religion more than likely worked ten times harder than he did because they had to cut their own path due to his poor reputation.  Then he has the balls to demand these bands apologize to him when they take a return swipe at him.

     Every time I start to get some distance from his bullshit and try to get into Lydon's other band Public Image Ltd., I always end up reading something stupid that he said in an interview that puts that bad taste back in my ears and I call it quits.  Behavior like that from someone in their twenties is barely acceptable let alone from a man in his sixties.  Trying to regain relevance by saying stupid shit isn't going to get me to buy your record.  At most, it makes me wonder if he has anyone in his life that checks in on him from time to time.

Gooski's, 2/8/2019

Here are photos that I took at Gooski's on February 8th, 2019.  The lineup was Killer Of Sheep, Plasmid, Dead Batteries and Setiments.

Killer Of Sheep:

Plasmid:

Dead Batteries:

Setiments: