2020 Or Shaving My Balls With A Dull Box Grater

     For once, I am glad that I don't have to write about music in order to feed myself.  This being December, the obligatory year end list would have been a hurdle between me and a sandwich that I don't think I would have been able to clear this year.

     I did not keep track of what records came out this year for a multitude of reasons.  That's not to say that I didn't buy a metric ton of records and Bandcamp downloads over the past twelve months but I didn't keep my usual studious notes on what went through the speakers.

     Having been given a brain injury's worth of trauma before the plague and civil unrest of this year, time has been playing weird tricks on me while I've been locked in my house.  This year seemed to fly by at breakneck speed while simultaneously dragging on endlessly.  Flipping through the stacks of records that I've been neglecting to file away on the shelves, I found myself thinking “Wow, that record came out this year? I thought that was last year.” or thinking something came out a few weeks ago when it was months ago.

     Given the awfulness that this year has been, I was in serious need of comfort food records and didn't spend much time with anything new.  The Stooges, The Clash, Black Sabbath, Dinosaur Jr., Bad Religion, Buzzcocks and Motorhead were in heavy rotation.  Luckily for me, Funhouse, Paranoid, and Ace Of Spades received the anniversary box set treatment so I was able to take deep dives into those.

     Listening to David Bowie was a struggle that I had to give up on.  There was too much loss and his voice was like lemon juice in the wound.  Blackstar breaks me every damn time.  I haven't been able to even look at my Beatles' records, let alone take them off the shelf to listen to them.  They were one of Mom's favorites and I'm not ready for that yet.

     Quicksand, Helmet, Unsane, Jesus Lizard and Snapcase came in handy this year when I needed to fill the house with enough noise to prevent anything else from entering my brain.  I was reminded that Slip, Meantime and Progression Through Unlearning could be true friends in dark times.

     I was only able to walk through the doors of a record store about three times this year.  I made it to the second of the three Record Store Day “drops.”  I skipped the first one due to weather and there was too much COVID in the air for the third “drop” and the Black Friday releases.  The other two times were for supply runs for protective sleeves and the like.

     Since merely thinking about Spotify gets my blood pressure up, and I don't have their bullshit application on any of my devices, I don't have one of those spiffy year end lists that everyone was posting at the beginning of December.

     I'm sure there will be some glaring omissions but here are some records of note that came out over the past twelve months:

Erase—No Man

This Land Is Your Landfill—The Homeless Gospel Choir

Wonderful Hell—War On Women

What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down?—Public Enemy

Protean Threat—Oh Sees

III—Fuzz

Self-Surgery—Mrs. Piss

Stay Alive—Laura Jane Grace

     Fetch The Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple was a damn near perfect piece of art.  That record still gets my nomination for Punk record of the year.  All the white boys can scream and yell all they want but they won't come close to Fetch The Bolt Cutters.  Fiona Apple's words cut like knives and they go deep.

     NO from Boris was the one record that I kept going back to over and over again.  I don't even know how to describe it but I have spent hours on end with that record.  It started as a Bandcamp only download but has since been pressed to vinyl.  It's distributed as an import from Japan so don't look at the price tag unless you want a nosebleed.  It hurt the wallet but is worth every penny.

     The wonders of NO also pointed me in the direction of the band Gudon.  Gudon was a Japanese hardcore band from the mid to late '80s.  Boris covered their song “Fundamental Error” on NO so my curiosity was piqued.  If my bare minimum of internet research is correct, a former member of Gudon runs the label Bloodsucker Records who had a hand in the vinyl release of NO.  He saw fit to run off a batch of Gudon CDs in case there are weirdos like me that might want to pay the import price and exorbitant shipping cost to get the music from Japan to my CD player.

     Boris also had reissues of Absolutego and Amplifier Worship on Third Man Records along with another collaboration with Merzbow.  And they put some of their harder to find music up on Bandcamp so there's no need to break the bank on the limited physical releases if they ever turn up on Discogs or eBay.

     I do have an immense amount of sympathy for any band or artist that had a record come out in January or February or had one in the pipeline just as the shelter in place orders were going into effect.  All of that preparation and planning, from doing press to hitting the road to share the songs.  All of that work was flushed down the toilet and replaced with playing acoustic live streams on Instagram.  And that didn't even last very long because suddenly Zuckerberg got very shy about potential copyright infringement if someone played a cover song so that was shut down too.

     If a band or a small label put out a record this year, after knowing full well that the year was lost, I would almost consider that an act of bravery from a creative standpoint.  Since the only way to recoup the expense of making a record these days is through touring, it almost seems like a losing proposition for all parties involved.  If there were multiple vinyl colors available, I made sure to pick up one of each through mail order.

     Due to the botched response of our government and fellow citizens, there is no end in sight to this shut down and getting bands back on the road.  And that's if there's anywhere left to play when it's safe to have a room full of people again.

     Even if that spending bill that includes funding relief for venues ever gets through Congress, after looking at the other bullshit that's in the bill, I'm sure it will be nothing but a giant novelty check made out directly to Ticketmaster/Live Nation/Clear Channel.  Or at the very least, venues would need a team of lawyers and accountants to fill out all of the paperwork involved to apply for the funds.

     I don't see things getting back anywhere close to the way they were prior to COVID.  I've heard talk of Ticketmaster wanting to see some sort proof of vaccination before allowing people to enter venues.  I can only imagine how poorly the meathead security at places like Stage AE will handle that.

     There is way too much “wait and see” involved in this for my tastes.  If this year has taught me anything, it's to expect the worst from the majority of people and see way too few people rise to the occasion.

Crayon Death At Club Laga Possibly On April 23, 1999

     Here are pictures of Crayon Death that I took at Club Laga on what I am guessing was April 23, 1999.  I really wish I had taken better notes about these shows.

     Here's a link to audio from the show that was definitely on April 23, 1999 at Club Laga:  https://thecazartchronicles.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-club-laga-pittsburgh-pa-4-23-1999

Downtown Pittsburgh, September 27, 2019: Part Two

 Here's part two of the pictures that I took from a rooftop in Downtown Pittsburgh on September 27, 2019.

Raiders Of The Lost Test Pressing

     In the wee hours of Thanksgiving morn, I found myself insomnia/depression scrolling through eBay to pass the time.  I wasn't really looking for anything in particular but merely plugging in different band names to see if anything interesting was available.

     That's when a test pressing of Killer Of Sheep's album Scorned popped up.  It was being sold by someone from the label that put the record out and it was being sold at a not so friendly price.  And that price stuck in my craw a bit.

     The likelihood is very high that I could have come up with a copy of this test pressing locally, and at a better price, by sending around a few text messages or making some phone calls.  Both weighed down heavily with a heaping helping of gratitude and many a “Please and Thank you.”  But that wasn't the point.

     The point is that that record should not have been out in the wild in the first place.  And definitely not in the savage lands of eBay.  As Indiana Jones famously said, “That belongs in a museum!!!” or, at the very least, in my record collection.

     A test pressing of Scorned deserves a loving home and who am I not to provide said home.  I also wanted to keep it out of the hands of the cursed record flippers who scoop records up and resell them for double the price somehow forgetting that at the end of the day, these are only records.  If you'd like evidence of that, there is currently a copy of the first Killer Of Sheep EP, Out Of Time, being sold on Discogs for $99.50.  The last time that 7-inch was sold on the site, it went for three dollars.  I'm glad I've got a few of those laying around.

     One of the pitfalls of being a record nerd is that there are some records that I will buy every time I see them in the bins.  This is why I have several old pressings of the same Clash records.  I take them home, clean them up and keep them in a temperature and light controlled environment.  When I take one off the shelf to listen to, I make sure to grab a different one from the last time so they all get played from time to time.  My house is more or less an animal rescue/sanctuary but for records.  I know it's weird and trivial but at least I'm not beating up church ladies for their social security checks or a cop for a hobby.

     That's why when I saw the test pressing of a record from a band that means a lot to me I had no problem plunking down a day's wages to get it off of the market and onto my shelves.  The fact that the guy from label was charging such a high price for it bothered me to no end so I could also suggest that I bought the record out of spite.  I know that handing over way too much money for a record that should not have been sold for that amount of money makes little to no sense but I never said I was smart.

     I paid up and eagerly awaited my shipping notification.  Since the record was coming from Southern California, I knew it might take a minute to land on my porch.  My patience was rewarded earlier this week when it arrived among a stack of other vinyl mailers.  I am almost positive that everyone that works at my post office hates me due to the frequent trips they make to my house which is why I tip big during the holiday season.

     I figured out which package contained Scorned and put it aside.  Saving the best for last.  First up was a Bad Religion bootleg of a show from 1989 followed by the second Okilly Dokilly record which is a Ned Flanders/Simpsons themed metal band.  The third vinyl mailer actually had a book in it which was fitting since it was a book about record collecting titled Stay Fanatic!!!, Vol.2 by Henry Rollins.

     Then it was time to open the Killer Of Sheep record and holy shit was I disappointed and furious when I opened that package.  The record was only shipped in the paper sleeve that came from the pressing plant that had the hand written information on it. The asshole at the label stuffed it in the vinyl mailer without making sure it was flat so by the time it landed in Pittsburgh, the paper sleeve was severely wrinkled.  This might not seem like a big deal but as someone that would like to archive this test pressing for posterity and evidence that the band existed, this is a huge fucking problem.  And somehow, the record itself was covered in scratches and some sort of grit.  Were they keeping a potted plant on it at the office?  Fucking savages.  You'd think they'd have taken note of how much I paid for the damned thing and maybe packed it more securely.

     This is one of the other pitfalls of record collecting.  Encountering a record seller that does not have an appreciation for the sincerity and psychosis of the record buyer.  I could have gone unhinged and sent a nasty email to the seller and left a less than positive rating for the transaction but that would not have settled anything or magically fixed the condition of the record.

     I gave the record a bath, placed the sleeve between a couple of box sets in an effort to flatten it back out and wrote damn near a thousand words about the ordeal, you know, like a normal person would do.  And after a few listens, the scratches don't seem to have any affect on the play back.

     I would like to think that I'll get tired of record collecting at some point and succumb to the awfulness of streaming, especially because incidents like this sure do suck the fun out of it.  But then again, ones and zeroes over broadband don't create cool artifacts that me and maybe four other people care about.

But Wait!!! There's More!!!

     I had a weird but brief encounter with the how the more well to do part of the population lives and it is something I don't quite understand.  It reaffirmed my status as a class warrior and made me more appreciative of who I am, the simplicity that I strive for and the people I consider to be friends.

     I ended up at the funeral home because a friend of my parents had passed from the same rare cancer that my mother died of.  This was one of the few times that I have been around people since the beginning of the endless plague and the first time I was in a funeral home since my mother died so every bit of social anxiety and depression that I normally have was suddenly cranked up to eleven like some sort of fucked up Spider Sense.  While I was walking across the parking lot of the funeral home, I was already having chest pains and giving myself a nice layer of flop sweat.  I should have just turned tail and gone back to the car.

     Everything was going as expected.  I said a few hellos, signed the book and was enduring small talk with a few of the older folks.  And then it got weird.  One of the nephews of the deceased had flown in from California and had decided that he wanted to talk to me for the first time in over twenty years since we used to play together as kids.  For normal, well adjusted people this probably would not present itself as a problem but for me, at that moment, it was the last thing I needed.

     It rapidly went from me being surprised and happy to see him to me being regaled with stories of competing in triathlons that were held in different parts of the world and purchasing property in multiple states.  I don't even know what this person does for a living and I didn't bother to ask because he was talking to me like I already knew what he did for money.  He was talking to me like it was a sales pitch and he was a Bass-O-Matic or a timeshare.  None of what he was saying involved records, comic books or Star Wars so I was less than impressed and slowly started to tune out.

     I almost laughed when he told me of his plans to quit working for a while to go volunteer in third world countries to “You know, try to give back a little.”  If I stop working, I stop eating and start involuntarily camping.  If I were able to get a word in edgewise, I would have let him know that poverty is never too far away from where we're standing and that the United States is also a third world country.  We just do a better job of hiding it.

     One of the biggest problems he said he was having was convincing his wife that they should buy a $200 to $300,000 house in both California and Florida instead of only buying a $600 to $700,000 house in California.  He then went on to discuss the tax benefits of buying the two houses instead of the one.  I was completely lost.  I'd never consider myself to be the smartest person in any room that I happen be in but I'm also not the dumbest.  I had heard and understood all of the words he was saying but not in the particular order that he was putting them in.  He concluded with a “Well, you know how it is.”

     No.  No, I don't know how it is.

     To me, it's March 277th, 2020.  I am currently playing the role of teacher's aid, IT department and short order cook in addition to my usual duties at an office job that is slowly killing me physically, mentally and creatively while paying me just barely enough so I can almost survive.  Struggling to pay a mortgage and maintain a house that I shouldn't have bought that's in a shitty but not too shitty neighborhood.  So no, I don't know how it is to have luxury problems.  And I'm not the least privileged person that I know.  And why the fuck would anyone want two houses to maintain?  Oh wait, he can probably afford to pay people to do that for him.

     The guy wasn't saying all of these things in a bragging or flaunting manner to be an asshole.  It was almost as if he experienced life as a thing to be put on a resume`.  I get that he was just trying to make conversation but holy hell was it exhausting.  It still felt like he was going to throw in a second Pocket Fisherman by the time he was done talking and it was really uncomfortable.  There wasn't even a “So what have you been up to?” anywhere on the horizons of his speech pattern.  It was all “What can I do to get you into this used car today?”

     Is this what attending too many corporate retreats and seminars does to people?  Is this how well adjusted people who can't (or refuse) to see through the bullshit veneer of every day life interact with each other?  Is this how their weekend barbecues in Suburbia play out?  Is that how people turn out when they have parents that encouraged them in their endeavors and actually liked them?

     Luckily, he was interrupted by one of his family members so I was able to slowly back out of the room and then immediately head back to the car to disappear into the night.

     I do wonder what his reaction would have been if I had the chance to tell him that I'm working on writing, taking pictures and helping out punk bands instead of mentioning my day job.  I'm sure at some point he would have asked how much money I make by doing those things.  And then he probably would have needed medical attention when I replied, “Nothing.  I do it to do it.”

     Not everything in life has to involve money or the lack thereof.  Sometimes people do things for the sole purpose of doing things.

A Planet Of The Apes Thanksgiving

 

     We are a nation of six year olds that have never been loved by our parents while being fed a steady diet of Ritalin and Mountain Dew.  It seems that a larger than it should be portion of Americans would rather die than act collectively for the greater good.  And by the greater good, I mean not spreading an airborne plague amongst ourselves by simply covering our dirty mouths.

     Since when did dangerously lethal amounts of stupidity become known as bravery?  Wearing a mask while out in public is not a difficult thing to do and it is not a sign of weakness.  I don't know where you've been just as much as you don't know where I've been so we'll all cover our filthy gaping maws when we leave the house.  That's the new social contract.  If you don't like it get the fuck out of society.

     It was only a matter of time before this country was faced with a crisis that it couldn't bomb or buy its way out of with its “exceptionalism.”  COVID does not give a shit what the stock market did today and I am still dumbfounded and infuriated by the elected officials and media personalities that said money was more important than our elders so they should be sacrificed to save the economy.

     This virus is not a wedding in Afghanistan so it can't be taken out with a drone.  COVID should not be framed with the terminology of warfare.  It cannot be swiftly beaten back with “Shock and Awe.”  It can only be dealt with by very smart people who are not camera ready and people like that are in short supply these days.

     I've been stuck in my house since March, with no end in sight, because wanting to be constantly entertained was suddenly seen as a Constitutional right.  All of these gun toting rugged individualists that are unable to live without haircuts, high school football and Applebee's can go fuck themselves.  I'm not willing to die for some shithead that thinks it's their solemn patriotic duty to go out to a restaurant after watching children give each other concussions.  It's weird how these assholes fight to the death when there are pickles on their sandwich but offer up a deafening silence when it comes to cops murdering with impunity and hysterectomies being performed in our concentration camps.  I guess anything beyond fighting for the right to a mani/pedi is a bridge too far for some people.

     I am so exhausted from hearing the incessant whining about not being able to attend sporting events and not being allowed to drink in bars.  Every one of these unliterate lumps somehow became an epidemiologist over night and claims to know more than actual scientists.  When geniuses like Rand Paul end up getting laughed out of a room they cry about being marginalized and that their opinions should be heard.  Here's a newsflash: ignorance is not a point of view that needs to be discussed or given equal time to.  Go read a book that wasn't written by a sports writer or a TV preacher and then maybe you'll be invited back to the table with the grown ups.

     I have only been to two shows this year and I probably shouldn't have gone to either one of them.  I definitely should not have gone to the second one.  Even though it was outdoors, it was a super spreader cluster fuck of a day once people got a few beers deep.  It was not worth risking my safety to take some pictures and play road crew for a day.

     Sitting on a shelf, I have a stack of tickets from shows that were cancelled this year.  Some of which were scheduled in venues that will quite possibly be gone by the time this is all over.  Against Me!, Bad Religion with War On Women, Bikini Kill, Control Top, the Eviction reunion, Fuzz and Rage Against The Machine.  I was also supposed to see Anti-Flag and the Homeless Gospel Choir on multiple occasions as well.  Add to that the numerous local shows that would have popped up on a week's notice.

     I was supposed to go on a mini-tour with Killer Of Sheep back in March which didn't happen.  There was going to be some sort of shenanigans revolving around Submachine's 30^th anniversary that I was more than likely going to have some level of involvement in and none of that happened either.

     All of my coping mechanisms have been taken from me.  No punk shows, no movies and no restaurants.  I've also been avoiding record stores and the comic book store as much as possible because people are disgusting animals with no regard for others.

     Writing has been a struggle because coffee shops aren't safe to go to.  Trying to write at home has some serious problems for me.  I end up getting distracted by chores or saying fuck the chores as well as the writing and end up going to sleep.  Sitting at a table for a few hours when there is nothing but the blank page and a trough full of coffee in front of me forces me to do the damned thing instead of sitting at home where everything is competing for my limited attention span and I end up doing nothing.

     As some people have thrown caution to the wind with COVID because they got bored with it, I have taken an opposite approach.  I have tried to become more disciplined with my habits.  Going out less and less, being more mindful of how close I get to people at the grocery store and lowering the amount of people that I'm around.  Making sure that I wear a mask any time I'm around someone I don't live with.  I am sick of this shit so I will be taking my quarantining and isolation to extremes.

     All of this is to say that I could give a flying fuck at the Moon about you wanting to go out to dinner and spend holidays with your relatives and their dumb uncovered faces.

     Science and a virus that will kill you don't care about your feelings and that you can't drink in a bar so shut the fuck up, wear a mask and stay in your goddamn house.  This all would have been over by now if you had listened the first time.  We as a society didn't earn it so we don't deserve to have fun.

     This is playing out like so many science fiction stories.  Unknown disease springs up.  People start dropping like flies.  Government officials think they can punch this unknown disease in the face while ignoring the medical professionals.  I can't wait until we get to the part where there are apes riding down the middle of a famous city street on horseback.  We are so close to the end of humanity and too stupid to save ourselves.  Between COVID and climate change, I don't know what will happen first, Dune or Planet Of The Apes.

Anti-Rage-Bad-Sabbath

     As a music fan, I couldn't help but notice a rather odd trend that has kept popping up over the past several months of civil unrest.  Dumb ass white people in my age demographic that never bothered to pay attention to the lyrics of the music that they listen to.

     It seems like every few weeks some flesh bag that lacks critical thinking skills takes to social media to go after Tom Morello, from Rage Against The Machine, to complain about his, or the band's, politics.  I can't help but feel embarrassed for the person that tries to wage this needless war of words.  As if it will have some sort of effect on anything.

     These would be internet assailants never seem to bother to even check Tom's Wikipedia page.  If they did, they would learn of the history of activism that he was raised with and that he also has a degree in Political Science from Harvard.  Whether you agree with him or not, Tom Morello is no light weight in any sense of the word.  The other weird thing is that they never seem to figure out until it's way too late in the conversation that he's Black and they don't quite know how to process that.

     How people have missed that Rage Against The Machine skews slightly to the left for the past thirty years is beyond me.  Especially coming from people that are my age and grew up with the band.  That was during a time when it took effort to obtain music and we had to go out and buy CDs in order to listen. There were no smartphone applications that streamed poor quality sound to you and paid the artists fractions of pennies.

     Rage put their intentions on Front St. from the beginning.  From the name of the band to the Buddhist monk, Thic Quang Duc, burning himself in immolation on the cover of their first record, how was there any question?  And I'm not sure how dense you have to be for the lyrics not to clue you in.  The vocals weren't garbled or lost in the mix.  These were not Fugazi records where the wisdom was hidden in the metaphor and turn of phrase.  They were right there up front, loud and clear with their message.

     The artwork on every album wasn't subtle either.  There was a collage of books on the inside of Evil Empire that I used as a summer reading list once I had some form of income.  I scoured every used bookstore in Pittsburgh trying to track those books down.  That was the record that started to show me that there was more to existence than my white bread upbringing.

     A similar thing also happened recently with Black Sabbath when they put out a “Black Lives Matter” shirt printed with the font from Master Of Reality.  The “Keep Metal Stupid” contingent freaked out because, again, they never looked at the liner notes or paid attention to a word that came out of Ozzy's mouth on those first four albums.  Was “War Pigs” not clear enough?

     These dipshits also never bothered to learn anything about their supposed favorite band.  The members of Black Sabbath grew up in a part of post World War II England that was hit very hard because Birmingham was a factory town.  They grew up in the devastation left by war and were writing their songs during the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race of the Cold War.  They were writing about what they knew and what they saw going on around them.  With that collected experience and their history of hooliganism and drug fueled antics, how would Black Sabbath be in favor of police brutality and overreaching authority?  I guess that turns some people off when they discover that their musical heroes aren't bootlickers pushing faux rebellion that is easily marketable and spoon fed to the masses.

     Of all the bands on the planet, Bad Religion and Anti-Flag have had to deal with this as well.  Unless you were repeatedly dropped on your head as a child, there should be no confusion as to where either of these bands are coming from.

     From the cross-buster logo to album titles like The Empire Strikes First, Bad Religion has always been very forward with their messaging.  Did Greg Graffin use words with too many syllables in “American Jesus” for some people to understand?

     And in a very forrest through the trees situation, some people couldn't figure out that Anti-Flag was a political band. Not only is it in the band name and every album title they've ever come up with, it's in every song and pamphlet's worth of information in the liner notes.  I don't see how there is any confusion with “Die For The Government” and “Fuck Police Brutality” which are two of their earliest songs.  They weren't hiding anything and nor should they have to.

     If you don't like art that makes you think or challenges your preconceived notions and willful ignorance, I don't know what to tell you.  Maybe go listen to Pennywise or Blink-182 or some other mediocre bullshit for dullards, like the Offspring.  Clear Channel has several stations that are filled to the gills with songs about nothing that are readily available to provide extra mayonnaise to your bland diet of flavorless culture.  All of this feigning outrage and pearl clutching is tiresome and these people are boring.

Assholes On A Rampage Or White Male Supremacy Is One Helluva Drug

 

     Well, yesterday was the day (11/3/2020).  We'll find out if the giant wave of stupidity and hate crashes harmlessly against the shoreline or if it will drown us all with its vitriol and selfishness.  My hope is that forces of common decency can pull off one last trick before humanity flushes itself down the shitter.

     Walking around my neighborhood has me feeling less than optimistic and my anxiety has been running rampant.  I've been filling the house the sounds of John Prine and The Clash to help keep the demons at bay and that seems to be helping.  Keeping the television turned off and the phone on the other side of the house have also been good decisions.

     I have gotten really tired of local media trying to put forth this idea that Pittsburgh is some sort of forward thinking haven of progressiveness.  It's really not.  Especially when the majority of people in this town get their information from sports talkshow hosts.  It was very unsettling how every one of these dipshits became epidemiologists overnight and were spouting bullshit over the public airwaves all because grown-ups playing games went away for a while.  And when sports did come back their little brains couldn't grasp the idea of athletes kneeling in quiet protest or withholding their labor when police are murdering people on an almost daily basis.  Sports and racism go together in Pittsburgh like chocolate and peanut butter.

     While in COVID lockdown, I've been passing the time with home improvement projects so the house that I shouldn't have bought doesn't fall over.  One of the more peculiar downsides of this has been making the acquaintance of the asshole down the street.  He flies a B*ue Lives Matter/thin blue line 'Merikkkan flag on the front of his house while also flying a “Don't Tread On Me” flag.  Something tells me that he doesn't know the meaning behind at least one of those two flags.

     Since I don't want to be dressed in my usual black cargo pants/shorts and black t-shirt while working outside in the sun, I'll throw on one of the many shirts that I've collected over the years from marching in the Labor Day parade.  The designs that my union prints on these shirts fall squarely into the “America, Fuck Yeah!!!” category so I see no other use for them other than to wear them while doing yard work.

     Mr. “Don't Tread On Me” always sees me working on the house while he's walking his dog without a leash and not picking up after it or while he's setting off fireworks in the middle of the day.  I'm guessing he sees the sappy flag store patriotism printed on my shirt and has made the mistake of thinking that we are like-minded in some way.  His topics of conversation always stop just shy of whining about the large Latinx population of the neighborhood.  This asshole has only been in the neighborhood for a few years as compared to my sixteen years so he bristled a bit when I said the area has been that way long before I moved in.  He also gave me an odd look when I told him my concerns over the early stages of gentrification that are starting to happen with the uptick in house flipping that's been going on.  He didn't really seem to understand how I could think gentrification was a bad thing.  The next time I'm working in the yard I'll be sure to bring out a boombox with “Cop Killer” playing on a loop.  From the looks of his Virginia license plates he's probably an ICE agent here to hassle the locals.

     To help break up the day while I'm day jobbing from home, I've been going for long walks around the neighborhood as soon as I punch out.  I can't go a hundred yards, in any direction, from my front door without encountering T*ump merchandise.  From the typical campaign yard signs to giant flags to window decals that cover the back windows of pickup trucks.  This shit is everywhere and the people that display this nonsense give off a vibe of confrontational pride about it.  Good for you.  You spent $39.99 to tell me that you're an asshole.  In my mind that shit is the same as a swastika.

     I am very worried about how these assholes are going to react regardless of how the election shakes out.  I remember walking around Downtown a few days after the election in 2016 and being surrounded by drunk white boys screaming “Yeah, T*ump!!!” on every street corner.  The mindless violence that these people are capable of at the drop of a red hat is alarming.

     So much for being “Stronger Than Hate” while also having a complete disregard for the teachings of Fred Rogers.  All of these so-called Christians falling in lock step with the antithesis of what that man stood for make my brain hurt when they start quoting him.  The great selfish “Fuck you” of it all will be on full display for at least the next few weeks.

     When I woke up this morning, I was shocked to see that several numbskulls that look like pudgy versions of my high school bullies and gym teachers were elected to public office.  They also happen to be the spitting image of toxic masculinity and white supremacy.  As my stomach sank, I immediately thought of the Kurt Vonnegut quote: “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”

     One of the sadder parts of this is knowing full well that several members of my immediate family voted against their nieces and grandchildren's futures. I don't know if it's short sightedness, selfishness, some religious bullshit or pining for a time period that never really existed but it's disgusting to me whatever it is.

     No matter the outcome, we are so collectively fucked beyond fucked.  I guess I'll start looking into filing for political asylum in New Zealand.

Thirty Years Of Submachine

 

     I started writing some version of this back in February to keep some demons at bay.  The first sentence of the original draft was: “If the human race does not figure out a way to bring itself to an end by October of this year, Submachine will end up being a band for thirty years.”  I couldn't help but laugh when I read that because here we are at the end of October and we're getting pretty damn close to snuffing ourselves out on multiple fronts.

     Plans to mark the anniversary were being made and then had to be scrapped because a good portion of the population refused to be on their best behavior for two months earlier in the year.  New plans are being made that won't be nearly as sweaty and beer soaked but the occasion will be acknowledged in some way.

     I have been a fan of Submachine since I was but a wee lad and saw their fliers on phone poles around town.  I hadn't even heard any of their music yet and didn't even know where to go to find it but I knew from the looks of those fliers that there was something to what they were doing and I wanted a piece of it.

     Thanks to my local dealer, Brave New World, I had picked up all of their singles over time but still hadn't seen the band with my own eyes because of the under-21 of it all for the clubs and bars that they played.  If there were DIY or house shows that they played, I had no way of knowing when and where those took place since I was on the outside looking in and there was no such thing as the internet yet.

     If my memory is correct, the first time I saw Submachine was at a sparsely attended all-ages show at Club Laga, in the summer of 1997 or 1998, when they played with Crayon-Death.  I say sparsely attended because that has always been the nature of the beast with all-ages club shows in Pittsburgh when there were only local acts on the bill.  Which is why those shows hardly ever happened.  There were plenty of complaints about the lack of all-ages shows but when the time came no one would ever show up to the damned things.

     I don't remember much about it except that it was the early show because there was an overabundance of sunlight still streaming in through the windows of the club.  This was in the days before I would drag my camera and Mini-Disc recorder around with me so I have no documentation of the show.  I do remember having a handbill for the show but it has not survived after multiple apartment moves.

     By this time Submachine's vinyl anthology, Sawed Off Shotglass, had been released on CD so now I could walk around town with all thirty six songs playing on my Disc-Man and mainline those songs directly into my brain.  I played the hell out of that CD and still do.

     After the two beers that I had to mark the occasion of my 21^st birthday, I was finally able to gain entry to the 31^st St. Pub and other clubs for all of the punk and metal shows that my hearing could handle.  Still on the outside, I always posted up in the back of the room or by the soundboard of whatever club I ended up in since I didn't know anyone and the scene was, and still is, very insular.  I was damn near nonexistent except for the “Who the fuck is this asshole?” looks I would get when I'd walk in.  I really wasn't looking to belong to anything back then and I'm probably still not.  I was only there for the music and would go off into the night to search for food and coffee as soon as the last band finished playing.

     I stopped carrying the camera around with me because I had lost the plot and didn't really feel the need to at that point.  Scraping together the funds to have film developed and then stuffing the pictures into a drawer had lost its appeal.  How I regret that now.  A stack of punk photos from the late 90s through 2003 would have been quite the bit of history to sift through.

     During this time, Fresh Out Of Give A Fucks, Live Fast, Die Dumb and, the live DVD/CD, Off The Rails: Loose At The Moose were released.  Needless to say, I took copies of each home the first time I saw them on the shelf at the record store.  “Unhinged,” “Sluff Up My Nards” and “Trocadero Riot” quickly became some of my favorite songs.

     After a hiatus and the addition of stalwart Pittsburgh punk drummer, Greg Mairs, to the rhythm section with Ricky Budway and Jay Nulph, they are louder than ever and can still show the younger punks how it's done on a regular basis.  Their last LP, In Spite Of Everything, and a few recent singles have been the best sonic representations of their sound to date.  As a live band, Submachine can still steal any show that they're a part of.  Jeff Cherep is still one of my favorite punk rock guitar players of all time.  And if there's a room full of people, Alex Peightal will get in their faces while spitting gravelly fire and get the crowd moving in the pit.  Or moving out the door as I witnessed at last year's Halloween show when the band sent the hipster/college student clientele of the Halloween pop-up bar running for the nearest exit which still brings a smile to my face when I think about it.

     Once I decided to start going to shows again and sticking a lens in musicians faces, they were the first band that I made it a point to see as many times as possible.  I missed out on seeing them play too many times before their hiatus so I was not going to make the same mistake again.

     Since then, I have been lucky enough to have befriended the band and help out in any way that I can. Going from the socially awkward kid in the back of the room to the socially awkward coffin dodger next to the speaker stack to take pictures and keep an eye on the drum kit has been a weird ride. And hopefully the ride can resume at some point before humanity calls it a day.

https://submachinepgh.bandcamp.com/

The Stooges Funhouse Box Set

     Back at the end of July, UPS dropped off a massive box on my porch that contained fifteen LPs worth of the Stooges.  This release was the fiftieth anniversary pressing of the Funhouse album.  A recut version of the album itself plus the entirety of the recording sessions that went into the album.  There's a reissue of Have Some Fun: Live At Ungano's which came out a few Record Store Days ago.  There are two singles included along with posters, a slip mat and the requisite book of liner notes and essays.  Almost every inch of this thing has some sort of detail to it.  The box it was shipped in and the packaging within even had artwork of some kind printed on it.

     As soon as I got the email saying the monster was in transit, I pulled every other pressing of Funhouse that I own off of the shelf in preparation of its arrival.  You can keep Christmas and birthdays.  This obsessive record nerd was getting ready to celebrate one of the best records ever made.  It is still odd to me that the Russian bootleg pressing that I have sounds better than the 2005 and 2017 pressings from Rhino and way better than the pressing Sundazed put out years ago.  My guess is the Russian bootleg was a hotter mastering so it hits the needle harder.

     I picked up the CD version of the Funhouse sessions box set years ago and gave it a listen once through but never spent much time with it after that.  This time around, I am on my third listen of the entire thing and I think it's because I now know what went into making the record in the first place.  That and the sides are labeled “One” through “Thirty” so it feels like a challenge has been issued to see if I can get through them all.

     The Stooges had been playing some version the new songs live for a while before they recorded them so there wasn't much time lost to writing in the studio.  They would enter the studio each day as if it were a job site and punched a clock.  Each day they picked a song and went to work on it.  Forging, refining and sharpening each song until they felt they had it.  It was either the last or second to last take of each song that ended up on the album.

     The thing about this behemoth that caught my eye was the newly remastered version of the album itself.  It was pressed on 180gr vinyl and recut at 45rpm instead of the usual 33rpm so it stretches over three sides and has a nifty etching on side four.  Being cut at 45 gives the music some space to spread out within the grooves. So much so that the tone arm would sway back and forth as the record played.  I really wish there was a high resolution download of the new mastering included with the box but I know how to get around that.

     The guitar tones, snare and high hat generated by the Asheton brothers were all more pronounced and sounded like they would cut a motherfucker in a dark alley.  The thing that really grabbed my attention was the clarity of the bass lines.  History has not been kind to Dave Alexander but he was a steadier bass player than he got credit for.

     By the time the band came crashing in after the opening howl of “T.V. Eye,” I knew this thing was worth every penny.  I was hearing new things on a record that I had listened to countless times.  Any thoughts about trying to analyze or be academic with the exercise went out the window.  I hadn't had that feeling since the first time I listened to the new mastering of The Clash that Mick Jones had worked on. By the time I got to “White Riot,” I was in tears.

     A fifteen LP deep dive into one album might seem excessive to some, and it really is.  I've found myself laughing at the absurdity of this stack of records and all of the material that went into making the box set.  It is a magnificent waste of resources in a time when there is a shortage of medical supplies.

     As for the hours and hours of listening to the same seven songs being worked on, there really wasn't any startling revelation of where certain songs came from.  There's a change of phrasing here and a change of tempo there but not a whole lot of scrapping and overhauling the songs.  It was closer to watching bricklayers at work.  “Today we are going to work on 'Loose' until it's done and tomorrow we will work on '1970.'”  Listening to an entire LP of the song “Dirt” was damn near hypnotizing.  Because of the rhythm section and the way the song crawls along it became more of a meditation from take to take.

     At one point while the band was working on “Loose,” I did here Ron Asheton play a riff that eventually ended up on The Weirdness which was released after The Stooges got back together earlier this century.  The fact that he walked around with that riff in his back pocket for about thirty years was mind blowing to me and made me drag The Weirdness off of the shelf for the first time in years.

     That the session tapes survived has to be due solely to a marvelous clerical error.  Tapes take up space and cost money.  Every now and then labels and studios would throw out or record over any tapes found laying around when they ran out of storage or a new executive came in and wanted to rearrange everything.  A lot of music has been lost to history because no one thought it would have any value at the time.  The Funhouse tapes had to have been misplaced or filed on the wrong shelf somewhere because no one at Elektra cared about that band.  The tapes most certainly would have been disposed of if they were where they should have been.

     There are only two people still living that were in the room when Funhouse was recorded.  The man himself, Iggy Pop, and producer Don Gallucci.  Iggy posted an essay about Funhouse here and there is an interview with Gallucci in the liner notes.  Gallucci was smart enough to get out of the way to let The Stooges be The Stooges.  He only made two creative suggestions to the band and both were accepted. Change the opening track from “Loose” to “Down On The Street.”  And the other suggestion was to take the breakdown at the end of “Funhouse” and flesh it out into its own song which became “L.A. Blues.”  I don't think I could imagine Funhouse starting any other way than with “Down On The Street” that song gets straight to the point and serves as a mission statement for the rest of album.  And a weird factoid about Don Gallucci that I learned is that he played keyboard on The Kingsmen's version of “Louie, Louie.”

     The studio was set up as if the band were playing a live show and there was as little isolation used as possible when recording.  This helped prevent the sanitary sound of their first record.  I am so happy that the dirtier, rejected mix of The Stooges that John Cale did finally saw a vinyl pressing earlier this year.

     The Stooges were a dirty Rock 'n' Roll band that you wouldn't want to invite to your house for fear that they would raid your medicine cabinet and set your couch on fire so their records should sound that way too.  They might not have been the best textbook musicians but I don't think the best textbook musicians could have made Funhouse.  Hell, even the backing bands that Iggy put together every so often couldn't contain those songs.  There was something about the Asheton brothers and the space and time in which the album occurred that could not be reproduced.

     There are a lot of albums from this era of rock music that music writers point to as some sort of gold standard.  Even though they are only stating their subjective, personal preference on a topic that really doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, they would be completely wrong unless, by chance, they haven't heard Funhouse.  And if that's the case, maybe they should put their pens down.

West Penn Park, September 26, 2020

     Here are pictures of miscellaneous weird shit that I encountered back on September 26, 2020 while wandering around the woods of Polish Hill before the ill-advised super spreader of a show began.

Throw The Bums Out

     I have never so angrily filled in a bubble in all my life.  My ballot went back into the mail the day after I received it and that was four days before the first debate.

     In all honesty, what is there to debate anymore?  You either stand with this K-Mart brand Lex Luthor that is clearly a white supremacist or you stand against him.  And if you don't take the effort to vote against him, guess what, you're standing with him regardless of all the belly aching and whining that you do.

     Not everyone has the privilege to say they can sit this one out.  The hypothetical list of “others” is rapidly growing and chances are most of us are on this list.  Vote to protect your friends and loved ones. Directly or indirectly, we all know someone that has been affected by the awfulness of the past few years.

     This is no longer the time or the place for the pseudo-intellectual mental gymnastics that lead some people to think that both candidates are equally as bad.  Thinking that there could be a push toward socialism under right-wing fascism is laughable at this point.  Try having your monthly DSA meeting or anarchist potluck while there are roving gangs of racists on the street and drones in the air.  We are no longer in a classroom and academic theory will not cut it out in the wild.

     The current state of electoral politics is not the answer to our problems but there are bigger issues at hand.  And it is possible to do two things.  You can sit around and have discussions until you are blue in the face but you can also take a break from that to cast a ballot.

     Indifference and complacency were contributing factors in what brought us here.  Now is the time to act.  We are being counted on to be unreliable and to remain indifferent and complacent.  Let's show these pigfuckers that they're wrong.  I'm tired of going to my polling place and not having to wait in line.

     Do you remember how it felt on November 9^th, 2016?  Waking up to the news that a huckster had somehow been elected President.  The disbelief that enough people had fallen for the con and the uncertainty of what was to come was growing by the minute.  Do you remember that?

     Do you remember the disgust of the Muslim ban and the children dying in cages?  Do you remember the pain and the anger after Charlottesville, Parkland, Tree Of Life and so many others?  Then add on the tragedies of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.  And don't forget the forced hysterectomies in our concentration camps.  We have been bombarded with so much awfulness at such incredible speed that it's almost impossible to keep track of it all.

     For everyone that marched in a protest, publicly mourned after a tragedy or just felt despondent and didn't know what to do, now is the time to act.  A show of force at the polls is what is needed right now.  I know it won't solve everything and might feel meaningless but if we don't collectively force a correction, right now, I don't think there will ever be a chance to recover.

     I always keep in mind the over 200,000 people that have died from COVID.  I lost my mother back in February and still haven't recovered from it and that makes me think about how there are over 200,000 families that feel like I do and I feel terrible.  So much grief and suffering that could have been prevented if people would have been seen as more important than the stock market.

     I can't stand Joe Biden and don't agree with a lot of the things that he has done and supported but at least he acts like a human being.  He seems to be a decent man that knows loss and has been humbled by life.  Empathy and feeling the weight of everyday life don't seem like foreign concepts to him.

     On the other hand, we are dealing with people that try to negate what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears.  Attempting to rewrite events that just happened in front of us as if there were no such thing as cameras and video tape.  Let's show them that we see through their bullshit and refuse to be their docile servants.

     One of the weirdest things in all of this is that these assholes finally took off their loosely worn mask when it comes to punishing us in some way shape or form for not being born wealthy.  Somewhere along the way it became a sin to be a part of the proletariat.  Keep in mind that we did not start this class war. Over the course of human history, those that have are willing to do whatever is necessary to keep it from those that don't have.  Greed has been able to become a virtue for people who supposedly follow the teachings of Jesus.  Clearly, these greedheads have not read the Sermon On The Mount but expecting anyone to read anything these days might be a little much.

Registration deadlines are quickly approaching. Check out the link below to check your status.

https://vote.gov/

Killer Of Sheep At West Penn Park On September 26, 2020

     Here are pictures of Killer Of Sheep that I took at West Penn Park on September 26, 2020.  Mower and Necro Heads were also on the bill.

     Chances are I may have gotten West Nile, Poison Ivy and COVID from this show but it was only the second show I've been to all year so it was worth it.

     Be sure to give some attention to the Necro Heads.  Those youngsters are going places.

The Generator (aka The Unsung Hero Of The Day):

The PA:

Killer Of Sheep:

Mower:

Necro Heads: