I Can Feel These Records In My Marrow, Part Two

     Here is the exciting conclusion to the list of records that can be found in my DNA.  Part one can be found here.

     I put all ten records in a playlist while trying to put the words into some sort of shape and doing things around the house.  It is a bruising seven hours and forty-four minutes that is definitely helping me get through the hours of solitude while in quarantine.  Spending more time with these records has brought back memories of the nights of my youth that I spent in my room listening to music, writing and reading while trying to forget the world outside.  I guess not much has changed after all these years.  These ten albums have been a salve to new wounds but also a reminder of those from the past.  Again, I might be putting too much thought into these things.

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Iggy & The Stooges—Raw Power

     I am referring to the late 90s mix of Raw Power that Iggy Pop worked on himself.  This is the version of the record where the engineers that worked on it with him had to point out that not all of the levels needed to be in the red.  This thing could turn speakers into flamethrowers it was mixed so hot.

     After decades of the tame and distracted mix that David Bowie initially gave Raw Power, Iggy thought it was time to revisit the tapes and uncage the full potential of this beast.  This was my first exposure to The Stooges and I was taken aback.

     This record first saw the light of day in 1973 and I was confused as to why the rest of rock music hadn't always sounded like Raw Power ever since then.  The album sounded like one of those history changing moments where everything going forward would need to try to live up to it.  I couldn't figure out why there weren't monuments and plaques on every street corner honoring this monster of a record.  “I'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm,” should have been our national motto and printed on our money by the time I was born.

     Funhouse may be my favorite Stooges album but Raw Power was my introduction to the true King of Rock 'n' Roll, Mr. Iggy Pop.  Damn near every time I hear the man's voice I stand and salute.

Submachine—Sawed Off Shotglass

     After seeing the band name on fliers all over Oakland and the South Side while riding the 54C to and from school and then work I had finally started picking up every Submachine single I laid eyes on when I stopped into my friendly neighborhood record store, Brave New World.  The catch was the turntable that I had inherited from a relative was less than reliable and had already damaged a few records that I tried to play on it so I was wary of putting any other records on it.  So I ended up with this stack of singles and no way to listen to them.

     This is when Sawed Off Shotglass came to my rescue.  This CD collected all of the early Submachine singles, 10” That Hurt and Now That I Have Given Up Hope, I Feel Much Better. Thirty-six tracks that spanned an hour and six minutes.  By this time, I had plunked down the cash for a Discman and would be able to listen this CD all the way through from the time I would leave the sandwich shop, hopefully catch the bus, rot in crosstown traffic and then make the long walk home.

     To be able to listen an hour's worth of music from a punk band that came from my own town did wonders for me.  It showed me that molds could be broken and that things didn't have to turn out the way everyone around me said they had to.  For better or worse, there were a bunch of guys out there trying to do something out of the ordinary regardless of the outcome.

https://submachinepgh.bandcamp.com/

Fugazi—In On The Kill Taker

     This was the first Fugazi record that I ever purchased and is still my favorite.  By the time I got to “Great Cop,” I knew I would be a fan for life.  In On The Kill Taker has an ebb and flow to it from aggressive to quiet that caught my ear and the movement of the album still speaks to me after all these years.

     Much like with Black Flag, Minor Threat broke up in 1983 when I was all of five years old so I had no real attachment to that band.  Those Minor Threat records are great but because of time and place Fugazi was the band for me.

     I still remember the day I bought In On The Kill Taker.  I had a day off from slinging ham on rye so I went on a CD buying expedition.  In the days before the internet and everyone putting their unwanted music on eBay or Discogs, stores used to have a few hidden gems in their bins.  Instead of wandering into Brave New World as I usually did, I took the bus around town and hit stores that I wouldn't normally go to.  That day was one of the most lucrative trips that I had ever made.  I came home with the self-titled Body Count CD that still had the song “Cop Killer” on it, Electro Convulsive Therapy which was a Japanese import live album from the Rollins Band and an out of print Veruca Salt EP.  I picked up In On The Kill Taker at Randy's Alternative Music on Carson St. which later became Dave's Music Mine and the spot will probably become a douche bar in the near future since Dave's will be closing up shop, if they haven't already.

     There is a very interesting book on In On The Kill Taker in the 33 1/3 series.  There's a story about how Steve Albini practically ruined the initial recording and the band had to rerecord the whole thing. Which is not surprising to me and what's even less surprising is that Albini tried to trade on Fugazi's name when making his sales pitch to Nirvana to record In Utero with him.

Jets To Brazil—Orange Rhyming Dictionary

     There are those times when the chemicals in the brain just don't get to where they need to go for me to be a functional human being.  It's on those days that Orange Rhyming Dictionary comes in handy.  Every song on that record feels like it was written through the prism of my depression's worst days.  It's the musical equivalent of the oversized sweatshirt and sweatpants that go on when I know that today just won't work out so I'll try again tomorrow.

     I had somehow come in contact with Jets To Brazil before I learned of the juggernaut that is Jawbreaker.  Again, it was the pre-internet times so there was no real way to do research unless you knew a guy that knew a guy so my introduction to Blake Schwarzenbach was Jets To Brazil and not Jawbreaker, unlike everyone else on the planet.

     The name of the band and the album cover, with it's orange square and lyrics to the first song and a half going sideways across it, were enough to raise my curiosity.  There was something about the layout that looked off kilter and that was enough to convince me to take it home.

     Over the years, the song “I Typed For Miles” has changed meaning for me.  It used to be that Blake screaming, “You keep fucking up my life,” could be pointed outward in the general direction of someone else.  Nowadays, that line feels like a mirror that I can't look away from.  I'm the one that got me into the position that I'm in, no one else did.  So it might be time to take responsibility for that.

     Orange Rhyming Dictionary is the stylistic curveball amongst all of the other agro albums that ended up here.

Killer Of Sheep—Scorned

     A few years ago, I was heading down a bad road.  I was stuck in the work/eat/sleep/repeat cycle and could feel myself falling apart physically and mentally.  I had no creative outlet and no way to decompress from the endless stupidity of my day job.

     I had sworn off going to most shows because I couldn't deal with the crowds without having some sort of anxiety issue.  Things were getting dark.

     Instead of falling into some sort midlife crisis trap or starting to drink until I forgot where it all went wrong, I decided to get to work and start writing again.  In order to have something to write about, I forced myself off of the couch and out the door to more shows, humans be damned.

     It was shortly before all of this that Killer Of Sheep released Scorned.  I had been waiting for this record to come out ever since I first saw the band open for Flag a few years before and it did not disappoint.  For a record with that sound to come out of this town, I couldn't get over it.

     I made it a point to see Killer Of Sheep every chance I got because the songs that band was playing felt like they were grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me out of the funk that I was in. It felt like they were giving me back my will to live.

     Eventually, I picked up a camera so I could use pictures to help supplement the writing.  To justify the expense of the camera to myself, I figured that I needed to go to more shows and take more pictures.

     Soon I found myself lending a hand at both Killer Of Sheep and Submachine shows.  It was a definite change of pace from my usual spot near the closest exit to being down front and sticking a lens in someone's face and then helping to pack up after it was all over.

     I will forever be grateful to both Killer Of Sheep and Submachine for letting me into their circles. Working with those bands in any capacity makes me feel like I was given a new lease on life instead of sitting around and wondering how I ended up in a dead end life of stagnation that was killing me.

https://killerofsheep1.bandcamp.com/music

I Can Feel These Records In My Marrow, Part One

     What follows is not a list of favorite albums.  For me, that would be an ever changing and unidentifiable mass of records depending on mood, sleep cycle, time of year and any number of outside variables.

     These are the albums that form the bedrock foundation that helped to shape who I am and that I can feel coursing through me down to the genetic level.  These are the records that, to this day, I have to listen to at face melting volume every time I put them on.  Each of these albums can stake a claim to some percentage of my hearing loss from years of punching myself in the ears with them.

     There are three releases from Pittsburgh bands involved here which may seem like a cop out of some sort but I think it should serve as a reminder to not overlook what's going on in your own backyard.  One of those records from a Pittsburgh band is only three years old which should serve as a reminder to keep your ears open because you never know when a record is going to slap you in the brain and save your life.

     Since music is art and not a sport, I tried as best as I could to put this list together in biographical order and not ranked as one album being better than another.

     I broke the list in half since I went a bit long on words and don't want to take up too much of everyone's time.  Tune in next week for part two.

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Nirvana—Nevermind

     It's easy for a lot of people to push Nevermind aside due solely to the amount of times we have all heard the singles off of that album.  This record broke open a lot of minds.  Mine included and in ways that my adolescent brain could not put into words at the time.

     Coming from a sheltered youth that was peppered with a parenting style more fitting for the Eisenhower era, I didn't know that music could have an element of danger or anger to it.  My mother's record collection consisted mainly of greatest hits records from Barry Manilow and Kenny Rogers.

     With my father's attempts to bottle up any signs of rebellion in his children or anything that didn't fit his narrow view of normal, most car rides around town either took place in dead silence or with the radio tuned to an AM news station in great anticipation of a traffic report.  The car radio was only to be used as a tool while piloting a motor vehicle and never for entertainment.

     After hearing “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” I was thoroughly confused.  I had no idea that music could do that and wanted more of it.  That song was the bait.  “Breed,” “Territorial Pissings” and “Drain You” were the eyeopeners and the hidden track “Endless Nameless” was the box grater taken to my brain.  That song was several minutes of unintelligible screaming over savage music and that sealed the deal for me.

     Nevermind set me on the path to looking for more than what was immediately around me.  I didn't know where I was going but I knew I wanted to go.

Rollins Band—The End Of Silence

     I always wanted to write something longer about The End Of Silence but could never separate myself from it long enough to do so.  This record is too personal to me and I can't bring myself to share it with anyone out of fear of it losing its powers.  But I can tell you how I landed on it.

     As someone whose angsty teenage years took hold in the mid 1990s, Black Flag wasn't a thing for me so I had no idea who Henry Rollins was.  I was only eight years old when that band called it quits in 1986 so I kind of missed the whole Black Flag thing.

     Most people who were cognizant in the mid 90s remember a music video with a guy that was painted red and screaming that he was a liar.  I didn't have MTV as a kid so, much like everything else, I had no idea what the hell that was either.

     Then on August 17, 1994, at the ripe old age of fifteen, my sister took me to Metropol for my first real concert.  It was Rollins Band and Helmet and I have not been the same since.

     This was the first stretch of touring with Melvin Gibbs on bass so they only played songs off of the new album, Weight, so he wouldn't feel like he was in a cover band.  This meant that after the show, The End Of Silence was still a hidden treasure for me to discover.

     A few weeks later, the grind and bullshit of going to a Catholic high school kicked in and I started squirreling away my lunch money so I could start buying used CDs instead of food.  I picked up Weight first because that was what I knew.  A few trips to CD Trader later, there was a used copy of The End Of Silence in the bin and to this day it was the best purchase that I have ever made.  I suddenly had my own personal soundtrack to walk around with on my contraband walkman.  Every song felt like it was addressed to me personally even if I had no clue what the subject matter of those songs actually was.

Black Flag—Damaged

     Once I had a handle on the Rollins Band, it was time to play catchup with Black Flag.  I was not ready for the speed and ferocity with which the songs on Damaged were played.  I was accustomed to the bricks in a cement mixer sound of the Rollins Band and did not think that a similar message could be conveyed over fifteen songs in thirty-five minutes.  It was over so quickly that I had to listen to it again to make sure that I didn't miss anything.

     That record was a rabid badger attacking my teenage brain.  Songs about the cops, vandalism and not fitting in.  I was sold.  All of the MTV/trust fund punks at school were singing the praises of Dookie but Green Day's poppy bullshit couldn't keep up with Damaged in a million years.

     The mirror punching on the cover of Damaged said it all for me.  That was exactly how I felt in junior year of high school and, depending on how my day is going now, how I feel on a regular basis when I have to deal with my fellow humans.

Helmet—Meantime

     Even though I had picked up Meantime around the same time as the Rollins Band CDs that I was subsisting off of, it wasn't until senior year of high school that the album really clicked with me and it was a welcomed addition to the soundtrack in my head.  By the time the second song, “Ironhead,” ended all I wanted to do was punch the nearest human being for absolutely no reason.

     I was completely done with tolerating the rich kids, jocks and assholes that I had to contend with until graduation.  My patience was gone and I wanted to get on to the next thing and this album helped me blow off steam on the long walks to and from bus stops for busses that more often than not failed to show up.

     Meantime chugged along with an abrasiveness that just felt right.  Later on, I learned that the drummer, John Stanier, was the one primarily responsible for the way those early Helmet records were so pummeling.  I always felt that there was something missing from the newer Helmet albums and I think his playing was the key to their sound.

Crayon Death—Three Sixteen

     Most of the time when you have a coworker that's in a band that band is not very good but you do the polite thing and go see their band out of pity.  That was not the case with Crayon Death.  They actually sounded good to my eighteen year old ears.

     Post high school, I worked at a sandwich shop with the singer of the band, Dave Hummel, and I would never have known he was in a band unless one of our other coworkers hadn't told me.  It was a subject that he never brought up.

     Crayon Death was finally playing an all ages show at Luciano's on Forbes Ave., by Duquesne University, so I made sure to get myself there.  The place was a shoebox with a bad PA so I had no idea of knowing what I had just seen from the back corner of the club.  A few weeks later, I was handed a tape with six songs on it that would eventually end up on Three Sixteen.  I put the tape on when I got home and was blown away.

     Luckily for me, Dave's other job was being a bartender at the Attic/Club Laga and Crayon Death was more or less the house opening act every time there was a metal band playing.  By the time the band called it quits in 1999 I was lugging gear, taking pictures and recording the audio of their shows.  I would quickly fire off three rolls of film and then take a spot next to the speaker stack and scream along to every song.

     I loved that band and that record so much that back in 2014 I almost sunk several mortgage payments worth of cash into putting Three Sixteen out on vinyl.  The remastering was done and ready to go when events outside of my control made moving forward with the project unadvisable.  More information about that debacle can be found here.

     Someone did post some of the tracks from Three Sixteen to YouTube but they are the original mastering from 1997.  Below is a link for a free download of the 2014 remaster.

Crayon Death--Three Sixteen (2014 Remaster)

SST Is Damaged

     With all of this extra time that I have to sit around my house, I have been getting reacquainted with my record collection.  I recently took a long walk through the releases put out by the record label SST.

     At one time, SST, founded by Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn, was one of the greatest independent record labels to ever put out music.  In addition to Black Flag, the SST roster included the Bad Brains, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Husker Du, the Minutemen, the Descendents, Saccharine Trust, Sound Garden and many others.  Of late, SST has fallen into neglect and disrepair.  It is well past time for tapes to be remastered and records to be reissued.

     One of the greatest records that SST ever put out was the self-titled album by a band called The Stains (SST 010.)  There were only one thousand copies pressed in the early '80s and the album was never given a second pressing due to a dispute over royalties between the band and the label.  Every so often a copy pops up on the internet at such an astronomical price that it always makes me laugh instead of making me want to sacrifice my credit rating in order to say that I have that record on my shelf.  There used to be not so legitimate downloads of the record readily available on the internet but I guess they have all been removed.  Some upstanding citizens have posted the album to YouTube for our enjoyment so it's not lost to the ages.

     Hours and hours of unreleased music by Black Flag is sitting on a shelf or in a shoebox somewhere going unheard.  When that band wasn't on the road, all they did was practice and record. All of that music could be mixed down and packaged with the corresponding album that was the result of those sessions.

     Instead of using his time to sue his former bandmates and pull videos off of YouTube, Greg Ginn could invest some time into his label and correct some of the production issues that are present on most SST releases due to the budget limitations at the time they were recorded.  If nothing else, the output volume could be increased because the original levels were so quiet.  And if there is so much fretting over copyright infringement, the better quality bootlegs and live recordings could be collected and released as well.

     This would be a massive undertaking that would hopefully keep Greg Ginn so occupied he'd be unable to tour with that abomination of a band that he still calls Black Flag.  One of the funniest Amazon reviews of any record I have ever read was aimed at the album that came out a few years ago.  It went something like, “If my dad hadn't died, listening to this record would be the worst thing that happened to me this year.”

     Reissuing all of these records could also help make right some of the sins of the past when it came to royalties and other payment problems with SST.  All of the members of the bands involved could get paid.  All of these musicians are around the age of sixty and could probably use the extra walking around money.  After all, there are no punk rock retirement and healthcare plans so get these folks paid.

     I am aware of all of the arguments against the reissuing of records and why it shouldn't be done. The excuses that range from a recording being a snapshot of a particular moment in time that should be preserved all the way to it being a crass cash grab.  Those are just attempts at holding up some false sense of integrity.

     If, at the very least, Damaged was given the half speed remastering treatment and recut at 45rpm over two 180g LPs, I know I'd buy at least one copy for myself and enough to give one to every high school student in the city.  Damaged changed so many lives the first time people heard it.  Now imagine everyone getting to hear that record again for the first time and at the same time sharing it with younger generations at full velocity.  Police stations and banks all over the country would be on fire by the end of the first week of that record being on the shelves.

     Damaged is a record that could cut a mother fucker and should sound like it will jump out of my speakers and do so.  I know it's probably never going to happen but dreaming about records and civil unrest are two of my favorite things.

Fetch The Bolt Cutters Because This Land Is Your Landfill

     The past two Friday's have graced us with two record releases that couldn't have come at a better time.  Fiona Apple's Fetch The Bolt Cutters made a daring escape from her home laboratory and The Homeless Gospel Choir gave us the gift of This Land Is Your Landfill.

     I have had both records in heavy rotation since I jammed them onto my computer.  Vinyl for Fetch The Bolt Cutters is due out in July, at the earliest, and I'm still waiting for my preorder of This Land Is Your Landfill to ship out from A-F Records.  Due to the end times plague shutting everything down, it might be a while before either album is on my turntable.  That is a minor annoyance since I prefer to have liner notes and lyric sheets handy when I make poor attempts at reviewing records.

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     As far as I'm concerned, Fetch The Bolt Cutters might just be the best Punk record of the year. And if, after listening to it, you don't think Fiona Apple put out a Punk record, give it another listen and read up on how it was recorded.  Ms. Apple recorded the album at home, at times using the walls and floorboards as percussion.  From beginning to end, this record is not messing around and has the skill and attitude to back it up.

     Since Fiona Apple operates outside of the tour/record/tour/record cycle, it's been eight years since her last album, The Idler Wheel...  She seems to use that time to be very deliberate in every word and sound chosen to assemble her songs.  At times, the songs butt up against each other rhythmically but still fit together as a whole and more than once I found myself thinking, “I have no idea what just happened but it works for me.”

     Lyrically, I wouldn't say that the knives are drawn so much as the samurai sword has been honed to hair splitting sharpness and aimed in the general direction of the world around us.  Fiona Apple is tearing into society with so much more “Fuck you” in her words than any “Punk” record that I've heard in the past few years.  The debacle that led to a second sexual predator being appointed to the Supreme Court and scumbags such as Louis C.K. were definitely fuel for the songwriting fire.

     My favorite line of the record is “I told you I didn't want to go to this dinner” from “Under The Table.”  It made me recall all of the times an ex would take me to parties and other events that would require me to act like a well adjusted human being so she could show me off to her friends.  Instead of reacting when someone would inevitably say something stupid, I would end up sitting quietly and biting my tongue until it would bleed.

     Fetch The Bolt Cutters is some of Fiona Apple's best work and she keeps getting better from one record to the next.

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     After hearing a handful of the new Homeless Gospel Choir songs live and in person over the past year or so, it was great to finally get to listen to them all together and hear what Derek Zanetti had envisioned with This Land Is Your Landfill.  I knew our collective ears were in for something special but the nicest person in Punk Rock exceeded my expectations with this new record.

     The production was once again aided and abetted by Chris #2 of Anti-Flag.  The dynamic that they have together is incredible.  #2 seems to know how to push Derek to get the best out of him while also knowing when to get out of the way to let Derek be Derek.

     In addition to writing songs about trying to hold it together in the face of mental health issues and having an awareness of the world around him, Derek Zanetti has started taking aim at the internet and social media culture.  And it is odd that being on the internet is how we have to operate now that we're all stuck in quarantine and punk shows are cancelled until who knows when.

     As per usual with every Homeless Gospel Choir record, there is at least one song on This Land Is Your Landfill that calls me on my bullshit.  “Figure It Out” hit me hard.  The song is more or less about the shit sandwich that some of us have to eat when faced with the futility of the Amerikan Dream.

     One of the anonymous internet complaints that This Land Is Your Landfill has been handed is that it's not “Punk” enough.  Maybe the folks that heard the record that way need to broaden the spectrum of what they consider “Punk.”  Or, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, take a look around them and the world in which we live and try shutting the fuck up with their meaningless rules and gatekeeping.  But then again, I am the guy that just wrote that the new Fiona Apple record was punk as fuck.

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     I have had to be careful while listening to both of these records since I'm walking around with a brain injury's worth of trauma and depression while locked in solitude.  I usually have to have a Motorhead or Beastie Boys chaser immediately following to help straighten me out because both Fetch The Bolt Cutters and This Land Is Your Landfill have a lot of weight to them.

Snapcase

     The band Snapcase has been invading my thoughts a lot lately.  They had recently reconvened for a few West Coast shows and a few test pressings of their Steps EP popped up on Discogs (both of which I have given a proper and loving home to.)

     After watching the shaky cellphone videos from these shows, I was sent running to my record shelves and gave the band a listen for the first time in a long time and haven't been able to stop since. I forgot how many layers there were to Snapcase's music.  They were much more than the overindulgent thumping double bass drum sound of their peers.

     The band hailed from Buffalo, NY and due to the proximity to Pittsburgh, Snapcase always seemed to either begin or end a leg of a tour in Pittsburgh because the city was either on the band's way to or from wherever they were going.  This gave me the chance to see the band play so many times that I lost count and I am so grateful to have taken every opportunity to see them that I could.

     I always stood in the back or off to the side with someone in the band that I used to lug gear for at the time and we would stand there slack jawed with envy over how good Snapcase was.  You'd have a hard time finding a tighter band that never seemed to have a bad night.

     Lyrically, Darryl Taberski went deeper than the “I hate my mom/I hate my dad/My girlfriend betrayed me” content of other hardcore bands of that time.  His vocal approach was more of a shout instead of the yelling like a barking dog of other bands.  This way you could actually hear what he was saying and learn a thing or two from what he was putting forth.

     Snapcase always threw a curveball at the meatheads in the pit that rolled up in their gym clothes to perform their version of rugby meets interpretive dance.  They had no idea what to do with their lawnmowers and windmills during the musical ebb and flow of a Snapcase set.

     I will forever be grateful to my friend Dave Hummel for putting a Snapcase CD under my snout when he did.  Progression Through Unlearning was one of the most jarring first listens to a record that I have ever had.  My late adolescent brain was stopped in its tracks and I was incapable of doing anything other than listening to that record all the way through and then doing it again and again.

     The hook that made me an instant fan for life was the song “Harrison Bergeron.”  Not only was it named after my favorite Kurt Vonnegut short story, it's also one of Snapcase's best songs.  If you haven't read the story or heard the song, do yourself a favor and do both.

     Snapcase had one of the strongest album arcs I have ever heard, going from Lookinglasself through their final album End Transmission.  Each record was better than the one before and they continued to build and further push the boundaries of what “hardcore” could be.  I have always been curious to know what direction they would have gone to next if they didn't hang it up in 2005.

     The basketball shorts and hoodies end of the hardcore spectrum left me behind around the same time that Snapcase broke up.  The shows started to feel like they were more about everyone taking pride in hurting each other in the pit than they were about the music.  Without Snapcase around to keep things from getting boring, I stopped going to those types of shows.  The bands all started to sound the same and I really couldn't tell the difference between one band and the next.  The music stopped moving forward and there didn't seem to be a band that was willing to give it a push to keep it from growing stagnant so I gave up on it.

     I really wish I had taken my camera to at least one Snapcase show but I never did.  Since the shows were always ticketed events, I never thought to do so.  Witnessing that band while hiding behind the stage right speaker stack would have been one hell of a way to spend an evening.

The Self-Quarantine Blues?

Addendum:  The below article was all ready to go when I found out that we lost John Prine.  So before we get on to my silly bullshit, here's a John Prine song.  Bill Withers last week and John Prine this week.  Fuck everything.

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     It's a few weeks into this self-quarantine business and I'm starting to realize how little I ever went outside to begin with.  I guess being an antisocial misanthrope who was practically a shut-in to begin with has its benefits during the plague.  It's my time to shine.

     The only real adapting that I've had to do is day jobbing from home.  After twenty years of observing the behavior of my corporate overlords, I'm surprised that even happened.  Their usual approach to a calamity is to tell the help to show our company IDs to any law enforcement we might encounter on our way to the office and try to convince them to let us pass any closed roads or checkpoints.

     The company started out by distributing certificates from Homeland Security for us to show at roadblocks and for us to be able to buy gasoline, if we get to the point where gas stations shut down. The next day, it went to getting a headcount for volunteers to work from home so they could provide laptops.

     The following day it progressed to giving us all twenty-five foot ethernet cables to see if we would be able to run them from our modems to a spot at home where we could set up our computers.  The next morning, management met everyone at the door and told us to unplug our computers, pack up anything else we might need and to go home until further notice.  After two decades of having pens and post-it notes on lockdown, I kept waiting for security to tackle me as I walked through the parking lot with a computer tower and two monitors.

     I have had to make sure that I stick to a similar routine as if I were leaving the house to go to work.  My depression already has me operating at a level that is very much a lame version of Captain Willard at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, laying on the couch staring blankly at the ceiling.  My fear is that if I allow these habits to break down, I'll go full Colonel Kurtz and make my own army of natives out of leftover vinyl mailers and poster tubes.  The horror, the horror.

     Now that I'm working from home and all punk shows have been cancelled for the foreseeable future, I have damn near no reason to go outdoors at all anymore.  Outside of getting the mail in and a weekly Charlton Heston in The Omega Man-like run to the grocery store at 7am on Sunday mornings, I have no real need for the outside world.  I've got plenty of shit tickets and I picked up ten pounds of coffee before Zeke's decided to close so I should be alright for a while.

     After the events of the past few months this has provided me with some much needed downtime that I will gladly take advantage of.  This will give me time away from humanity to find the plot that I have so thoroughly lost without taking it out on people that don't deserve it.  I can't be a miserable prick in someone's general direction if there's no one around.

     The only thing I'm really missing is going to a punk show.  I haven't been to a show since I ventured to New York with Killer Of Sheep.  I was really in the mood for one and they all got called off as soon as I was able to make it to one.  And I do realize the strange paradox between hating to be around people while also wanting to be in a room full of them for a show.  I never said that I wasn't a hypocrite.

     Since my workstation is only a few feet away from the stereo in my living room, I've been giving myself daily listening assignments to fill the silence.  I think by the time this is all over with, I will have worn the needle on my turntable down to a nub.  I pull a stack of records off of the shelves either by artist or by some sort of theme that I cooked up in my head.  I'll keep them spinning until I get to the bottom of the stack.  I'll start at 7am and go well into the evening on some days.

     I have learned that the usual punk rock comfort food records that I used to turn to when times were difficult are not giving me the solace that I used to find in them.  There's something missing when I listen to them now and whatever it is that's gone will hopefully come back at some point.  That crutch of meaningless bullshit that I have always relied on to keep me grounded may have broken.

     But then there are other records that cut into my brain like a knife and I lose all function.  I found that out the hard way with I Used To Be So Young by The Homeless Gospel Choir.  One minute I was fine and the next I was balled up on the couch for the rest of night.

     The one constant on the turntable over the past month or so has been the reissue of Rowland S. Howard's Teenage Snuff Film that Fat Possum put out.  That man had a tone and an attitude from the most depressing pits of Hell and is right up my alley.  Teenage Snuff Film never had a North American release and was always hard to come by at a reasonable price.  The new vinyl mastering sounds lightyears better than the less than legit download that I borrowed off of the internet years ago.

     The one thing that I'm hoping to see in all of this is a battalion of apes riding horses down the middle of what used to be a busy street.  There are already roving gangs of monkeys foraging for food in Thailand so we can't be too far off from Planet Of The Apes.  Humanity has had a less then great run so let's give another species a chance.  A Sci-Fi nerd can hope, can't he?

Dammit

Context:  Here's a thing that I wrote almost a month ago.  I finally gathered the wherewithal to give it a half-assed edit and post it.

March 5^th, 2020—9:30am

     I am currently sitting in the observation area of a crematorium with my daughter and my niece. Dopesmoker, by Sleep, is playing on the headphones and is accompanied by the roar of the oven on the other side of the window.

     The past three weeks have been difficult to say the least but at least I'm here to see my mother off to the very end.  It's a two to three hour process to reduce the person that gave birth to me down to a cookie jar full of calcium.  She went fast and there was little pain once the meds kicked in.  I'd much rather have that for her than the long drawn out struggle that was lined up in front of her.

     I stepped back from the planning of the arrangements in order to give other family members that showed up to help something to fill their time and help to express their own grief by lending a hand. Stepping back will also give me a minute to gather some much needed solitude.

     Over the next three days, I'm going to be surrounded by people that want to express their own grief and sympathy in my general direction and I have no idea how I'm going to handle that because I don't know where to put my own truckload of grief.  There are only so many times that I can hear, “I'm sorry for your loss,” before it starts to turn into background noise.

     Having a very low tolerance for human interaction is probably not the best place be through all of this and will wear on my patience by the time this is all over.  Trying to hold it together until this is done has been nearly impossible.  The quiet moments through the day are when the weight hits me hardest.  Trying to get through to the next day and the one after that.

     Things will slow down.  Old routines will reemerge.  Trying to remember will become the challenge as time moves on.  On my phone, I still have the last voicemail that she left me.  I haven't been able to bring myself to listen to it.  And that's okay because it will take me a while to find that stupid headphone adapter so I can plug my iPhone into my stereo and make a proper recording of it.

     Blackstar, by David Bowie, is up next and I'm sure I'm about to turn into a puddle because I am a glutton for punishment.

March 7^th, 2020—7:00pm

     After a whirlwind three days of visitations, a service and a luncheon, the job is done.  I'm sitting alone in my house and don't know what to do with myself.  I've been operating through this weird, bleary eyed exhaustion over the past few weeks and now that I have a moment to relax I can't.

     By the end of the first night of visitation, I was light headed and in a daze.  So many hands were shaken and countless hugs were received.  I saw a lot of faces that I hadn't seen in years and a lot more people that I had no idea who they were.  The entire evening went by in a blur.  At least Onion Maiden was still open by the time I was back in the area because there was no way I was going to function long enough to make anything to eat.

     Friday was the long day with the two hour visitation in the afternoon followed by a two hour dinner break and another two hour session in the evening.  It was such a flurry of activity that I didn't have a chance to actually talk to anybody in a meaningful way and can't really remember anything that happened during the two visitations.

     One of my relatives that lives near the funeral home offered to have everyone over for dinner so we wouldn't get stuck at any of the nearby restaurants.  I'm grateful that he did that so everyone else was taken care of but I needed to duck out in order to get away from the masses for a few minutes.

     That plan went to shit almost immediately.  My desire to have a quiet table for three suddenly became a table for eight.  I ended up having to stay in character over dinner instead of being able to decompress for an hour or so and to return to my natural state of being a miserable prick for a while.

     Earlier today was the last hour of visitation followed by the service and the luncheon.  Even though it was only a few hours ago, I can't really remember any details of the events.  Exhaustion and trauma are funny that way.  More than likely, it will all start coming back to me over the next few days and weeks once I have a chance to catch my breath.

     After lunch, we had to go back to the funeral home to pick up the last of the flowers and give her one last ride home.  Over the past few weeks while she was in the hospital her main goal was to make it back home so she could spend the last of her time with her family and friends but she never made it home.

     Trying to put this into words has been like pulling teeth.  My brain doesn't want to do anything besides shut down and not think about anything for a long time.  I find myself staring at the floor every so often and I have to shake myself out of it to try to regain some sort of focus.  There is really nothing to say and nothing that can be done about any of this.

     The feelings of my own mortality and the streamlined manner in which I live that this has stirred up has been less than helpful.   I can't blame anyone other than myself for getting me to where I am.  Sitting in a house by myself not knowing how to process a traumatic brain injury's worth of grief and sadness.  Not really feeling anything because I am feeling everything at once.

     Fuck it.