A Question Of No Consequence Answered Way Too Seriously

     The question was posed on Twitter last week, by Post Gazette music writer Scott Mervis, whether it was okay for Richie Ramone to be going around playing Ramones songs in a new band.

     As much as I would consider myself a purist, and as much as I bow down at the altar of the Ramones on an almost daily basis, the idea of Richie playing those songs out doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would.

     After all, Richie was actually in the band.  He played on Too Tough To Die, Animal Boy and Halfway To Sanity and somehow managed to make the Ramones' live set two minutes faster.  Richie was unceremoniously booted out of the band because of a dispute over T-shirt money.

     People need to understand that there is no punk rock pension plan or retirement package.  A lot of the musicians that were in punk bands from the 70s and 80s have nothing but the songs they wrote.  If they want to put together some sort of configuration of the band they were in to take advantage of nostalgia dollars, they should be able to do that.  As long as the bands are tight and the songs are treated with respect, more power to them for going back out on the road.  Now that being said, I was unable to make it to the show last week when Richie came through town so I can't say whether this band's proof is in its pudding.

     The songs that the Ramones put together belong in a live setting.  With the original four members no longer with us, at least Richie is out there keeping the songs alive, not unlike an orchestra playing classical music.  And what's an orchestra other than a snooty cover band in tuxedos.

     The Dead Kennedys tour every so often, minus Jello Biafra.  Jello took offense to the point where he sued the other band members to try to prevent them from playing the old songs out.  It seems like Jello forgot that he wasn't in the van or studio by his lonesome.  He might own the publishing but he would not have been able to do it without the rest of the band.

     There were dueling Black Flag reunions a few years ago that also ended up in litigation.  Suits and countersuits were filed mostly on the grounds that Greg Ginn might be a great guitar player but also an insufferable prick that doesn't know how to disburse royalty payments from his label, SST.  As much as I hate Stage AE, it was worth the price of admission to see Keith Morris rip through the song My War.  That show was also where I was exposed to, local punk band, Killer Of Sheep's live set for the first time.  Which was a fair trade for the cancer screening of a pat down I was given by venue security.

     Pittsburgh is saturated with cover bands to the point where original bands are marginalized. A strong, well nurtured local scene cannot develop when every stage in town is occupied by a cover band.  Instead of forging their own legacy, most musicians in town are saying to hell with it and starting a cover band to make beer money off of someone else's legacy.  At least Richie Ramone was a part of the legacy that some people are sure to say he's taking advantage of.

What A Week

     It's been yet another odd and trying week as humanity takes its final gasps before the virus that we are is flushed away by the planet's immune system.

     The last male Northern White Rhino died.  The animal has been hunted and poached down to a few remaining females.  Way to go humans.  The only hope for the species is a jar of frozen rhino jizz and there shouldn't be much hope for that since science is a dirty word all of a sudden.  Hopefully the freezer is plugged into a sturdy enough plug strip and not one of those 99 cent ones that crap out after a few days.

     The first two days of Spring greeted Pittsburgh with ten inches of snow which ripped my shoulders to shreds by trying to get it out of my driveway.  And in other weather related news, some genius posted something on line about how the “Jews” control the weather.  As if they weren't busy enough controlling Hollywood and the international banking system, now they can make it rain on Nazi parades.

     The terrorist that was setting off bombs all over Austin, TX blew himself up just before being apprehended.  The really strange thing is how the media and the authorities have somehow avoided calling him a terrorist.  Oh wait, that's not strange at all.  It's because he's white which means he was troubled and needed help.  The word “terrorist” is reserved for brown people who pray to Allah even though an entire city was terrorized for a few weeks and his targets seem to have been racially motivated to some extent.  I guess if you start calling a white person a terrorist it might start to chip away at the narrative of white supremacy that runs to the foundation of this country.

     And while I'm on the topic of white supremacy, 45 is now involved in multiple lawsuits over nondisclosure agreements with two porn stars after having affairs with them.  Could you imagine the uproar that this would have caused with our previous president?  Those Tea Party dipshits would have been so enraged they might have actually used a dictionary before making their signs before all twelve of them would show up for a fake rally.  The most disturbing part of the story is that he told both women that they were so beautiful they reminded him of his daughter.  This is more evidence that the highest elected official in this country wants to have sex with his daughter.  Excuse me while I gag on my coffee.  At this point in my life, I think the only way I would ever sign an NDA is if it involved being able to see Avengers: Infinity War immediately.

     While 45 was busy putting the silver spoon back in his mouth so he could be shockingly silent over these lawsuits, he found time to call his boss to congratulate him on winning a rigged election. It's kind of hard to field an opposition candidate when Putin is the only one with the authority to determine who gets on the ballot and that's when he's not busy having journalists and vocal opponents murdered.  The footage of balloons being placed in front of the security camera to conceal the stuffing of a ballot box was only topped by the footage of the woman who didn't care if anyone saw her jam a stack ballots into the box.

     And if giving Putin an “ataboy” wasn't enough, 45 felt that John Bolton needed to be brought back into our lives.  An architect of the Iraq war is now going to be National Security Advisor instead of being in prison.  Bolton has spent the past few years screaming and yelling about how we need to go to war with Iran.  We've been fucking up the Middle East since the end of World War II so what's one more war?  The Iraq war never ended and we're already helping the proxy war along in Yemen so let's go into Iran.  Do these pigfuckers not understand that the average citizen will do the fighting and dying?  They do but they don't care.  45 wants to start a war because he thinks it will help with his popularity.  He also thinks that a war will get the media off his back because the corporate media won't criticize a wartime president.

     I thought it was safe to go to sleep on Friday night but then I checked the news Saturday morning and 45 started pushing his ban on transgender personnel in the military.  This coward's fear of the “other” knows no bounds.

     And in school shooting news, there was another one in Maryland this week.  Early reports said that the shooting was over a girl.  As much as I hate the Smiths and the Cure, if someone would have put them in his ears instead of a gun in his hands, there may have been a different ending to this story. He may have stayed in bed for month or become a frequent Hot Topic shopper but at least everyone would still be alive.

     The March For Our Lives was earlier today.  George Orwell wrote in 1984 that there was hope in the proles but I am starting to see that the last reserves of hope in our species can be found in the youth.  Forward progress has always been brought about by youth movements.  My faith in humanity has always been on the level of scrapings at the bottom of a barrel but being in the streets of Pittsburgh today and watching replays of the march in DC, my angry pessimism might be a little closer to angry optimism.  Hope is for fools.  It's toil and legwork that gets things done.  Today we march, tomorrow we vote.

     This week was another ride on a broken rollercoaster but at least it will end with the Southwest themed Onion Maiden pop up tomorrow.

Maybe I'm What's Wrong With That Record

     Over my many years of listening to music, there have been times when a record or an artist didn't line up with me or I just didn't get what they were up to.

     For years, I had an averse reaction to the Velvet Underground and Suicide.  As these were both bands that launched a thousand or so other bands, I knew there had to be something there that I was missing.  I also had a similar issue with David Bowie because I was only familiar with his mid-80s singles that were on the radio and was completely ignorant to his first four albums.

     Instead of dismissing this music and pitching the records into my local used bin, I put them back on the shelf and would go back to them every so often.  A few years ago, I put on Loaded by the Velvet Underground and it hit me like a ton of bricks.  I suddenly locked in and went backwards through their catalogue.  Then I went from their first album back to Loaded.  I had a new fascination that I could not shake.  Luckily, this was right around the time where all of their albums were getting the deluxe anniversary reissue treatment.  Each one was bound in a coffee table book with photos and essays.  There were new stereo and mono mixes along with outtakes, live recordings and a two-bowl corner sink.  I didn't fall down a rabbit hole so much as a bottomless pit.

     It took until this past year for me to wrap my brain around Suicide.  Alan Vega and Martin Rev put together a dense pile of sound that is not easy to listen to and are certainly not for the faint of heart. Their first album is the one you put on at the end of night to tell your guests the party's over.  My way into their music was through Alan Vega's final solo record IT which was released shortly after his passing.  I suddenly understood what Trent Reznor is always reaching for but always falling just short of.  They are an all out aural assault that can cause brain damage and alienate your loved ones.  Their music is art that challenges you to keep up with what they are doing.  It took me ages to get to them and I have been greatly rewarded for my efforts.

     With Bowie, I think my issues were my own maturity and a lack of access to his first four albums. In my younger days, even if I had access to them, I don't think I would have had an appreciation for his older albums due to symptoms of being an angry young man.  Now that I am an angry old man that tires easily, I can slow down and find great joy in listening to The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.  After repeated listenings, I am thoroughly convinced that it is one of the greatest albums ever committed to tape.  Sadly, the new boxsets that are coming out every fall are sonically lacking and do a great injustice to the man's work.

      A lot of people have problems with an artist's newer music.  Saying that their new record doesn't hold up to their older records.  If I encounter this in myself, I usually put the record back on the shelf for a few weeks and then go back to it.  Maybe I wasn't ready for it or my expectations were built up in a way no record could meet.  Or maybe I was just in a shitty mood and should have reached for the Slayer instead.  These people create music for a living.  Maybe they have a better idea of what they're trying for than I do so I'll give it multiple listens before writing it off.  And that rarely happens.  It may take a few spins for me to catch up but more often than not I can eventually see their forrest through the trees.  Besides, if a band put out the same record every other year, wouldn't that get boring?  They're growing and changing just like the rest of us so it's logical that their art would grow too.

A Man Without A Tribe

     One of the advantages of not being part of a clique in the local punk scene is that I am able to stand back on the periphery and just be a fan of the music.  When I go to a show, I normally stand by the soundboard or in a corner by the nearest exit.  This is an attempt to be left alone to enjoy the music which is the sole reason I left the house and put up with traffic to drive across town in the first place.

     I'm a generation behind the one that included Submachine and Aus-Rotten, and two behind the one that included Half Life and Real Enemy, so I don't have a personal connection to any of the members of those bands.  My only connection is through the records which were readily available at my local store.  I came into the scene from the metal end of the spectrum because I worked at a sandwich shop with the singer of the band I lugged gear for.  My introduction to the punkier end of the pool came from friends of my sister.

     I didn't have to put up with the politics of the scene or any he said/he said conflicts that always cropped up when people got competitive.  I didn't have to conform to any punk rock fashion uniform. As much as these people didn't care about how they looked, they sure did care way too much about how everyone else looked.  I would dress for the weather instead of wearing a denim jacket, bedazzled with spikes and the sleeves cut off in the middle of winter.  Chuck Taylor's don't really work too well when there's a few inches of snow on the ground and the temperature might get close to 20.

     One of the more rigid, implied rules of the scene was to toil away in obscurity for a few years and then break up or risk any and all punk rock credibility.  If your band started gaining traction and you were able to tour outside of the tri-state area, in places that weren't basements, you were cast out and ridiculed.  I was always under the impression that being in a band and staying in a band was the goal. That's the difference between a weekend warrior-hobbyist that still has a day job and an actual musician.

     If a band was able to manage being on the road for eleven months out of the year, that was somehow considered “selling out.”  I think it was jealousy on the part of everyone that was still stranded in Pittsburgh.  Or, maybe, it was their lack of ambition that kept them tied down to playing the same bar every other weekend while the same fifteen to twenty people drank at them.  What's more punk rock/anarchist than making a living outside of the usual economic means by living off of your art?

     Even when I worked shows on the regular, I would head home as soon as the van was loaded unless there was a stop for post-show food.  I had more of a connection to the music than the people involved with playing it so when the music was over there was no point in hanging around so I'd split.  My usual standoff-ish relationship with humanity prevented me from wanting to hang out while folks participated in post-show extracurricular chemistry.  As I look back on it, I think I was looking for something a little more high minded and artsy than the bunch of schlubs looking to get laid because they were in a band that I ended up with.

     There are no pictures of me hanging out outside of a venue before or after a show with a group of friends but I still have all of the records and I still listen to them on a regular basis.  I couldn't tell you if they were any good because I'm too close to them to listen objectively and I think that's okay.  The records are my yearbook or shoebox of dogeared pictures and I'm alright with that.

The Path Too Well Travelled Has Gotten Me Here

     Here's a follow up to the unmitigated hell-scape that my day job has become since I wrote Winnie The Pooh And The Pants Shitter, Too.

     Due to Winnie The Pooh's complaints about feeling lonely and isolated because she had her own private office on the first floor of a building with no elevator, the entire work group has been relocated to an office space across town that has an elevator.

     Almost everyone in the office lives on the western or southern part of town so the company decided to relocate us to the eastern part of town.  This added forty-five minutes to everyone's commute.  This can only be seen as a dick move by the company since they have office space all over the area.

     The office is set up with cubicles that have walls so high they block out any and all natural sunlight.  They are also arranged in such a way that it feels like I'm walking through a maze designed by M. C. Escher to get to the piece of cheese that is my paycheck.  The office also seems to have a constant smell of sauerkraut.  I don't know what that's all about but sauerkraut?  What the fuck have I done with my life?

     To go along with the delightful smell of sauerkraut, in what I can only see as an act of protest, someone has taken to microwaving fish on a daily basis.  So not only does it reek of sauerkraut, around noon every day, the office takes on the smell of fish with a side of sauerkraut.  I reiterate, what the fuck have I done with my life?

     The office space hasn't been occupied since 2003.  That means it hasn't been cleaned since well before 2003.  There is a thick layer of dust over every surface and the company decided that it didn't want to pay to have the place cleaned.  There are still post-9/11, flag store patriot, themed signs hanging all over the place.  “Let Freedom Ring,” “Stand United,” “These Colors Don't Run.”  Go fuck yourself.  I didn't fall for the mindless follower bullshit then and I sure as hell won't buy into it during the reign of Cadet Bone Spurs.  I'd take the signs down but I'd probably be turned into Homeland Security by one of the dunder heads in the office.  For God and country and puppies or whatever.

     Since there is no place for me to hide in the building so I can read or just have some silence on my breaks and lunches, I am forced to utilize the break room.  The television in the break room is always on at an ear splitting volume and The Price Is Right is being watched like it was a blood sport.  The half wits that I work with scream and yell at the television like they were the half wits in the studio audience.  I was never very fond of Drew Carey but I fucking hate him now.  And if it's not The Price Is Right, it's some sort of soap opera that is viewed with an intensity and focus that I have never witnessed being given to a television.  Evil eyes and shooshes will be readily handed out if any noise is made in the break room while they're watching their stories.

     Two weeks after Christmas, an unwrapped fruitcake, with a slice taken out of it, materialized out of thin air in the break room.  After three days, I was going to throw it out but my X-Files like curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see how long the fruitcake would stay in its current condition.  It sat on the table untouched for an additional two weeks before it vanished just as mysteriously as it arrived.  I don't know how brain damaged someone has to be to want to share a Christmas related snack food, that no one likes to begin with, two weeks after Christmas and then leave it on a table for another two weeks.  There's a metaphor about something in there somewhere but I'm too irritated to figure out what it is.

     As if it didn't have one before, the office has taken on even more of an air of an adult daycare center.  Everyone aimlessly shuffles around in a catatonic state until it's medication time or time to watch their stories.  This is how grown ups act in a place of business.

     Management no longer talks to me because it knows I would only emit a wraith like wail in response to any social query.  I need to quit my job and move to a shack in Montana to get away from these idiots.  I consider my greatest failure in life to have been the day I decided to take this job.  I should have taken the less secure path instead of the route that is falsely secure.  I might not know what I'd be having for dinner tonight but at least I'd have some shred of sanity and dignity left.

Not To Get All Andy Rooney About It But...

     What the fuck happened to this town?  I take fourteen years away from not really being part of the scene to raise a kid and everything closed on me.

     Every storefront on the South Side is now a sports bar, dance club or a vape shop.  Central Oakland has turned into a corporate shit show owned by the University of Pittsburgh that is devoid of character so the millennials don't get homesick while they flush their parents savings down the toilet. Here, have a Starbucks instead of a locally owned place that might add some variety to their spoiled lives and add to their experience on this planet.

     I've had to start treating the South Side with vampire rules.  I won't go down there after dark because that's when the bro-down begins.  It seems like every meathead with a lot of hair product, even more Axe Body Spray and some sort of neatly trimmed facial hair descends on Carson St. as soon as the sun goes down so they can get liquored and start a fight in some bizarre attempt to get laid.  And if it's not the brainless Bros it's the khaki clad, next generation yuppies that would have sold their own mothers to get ahead and voted for Reagan if they were alive in the 80s.

     The South Side also seems to be the choice location for local athletes to come to get arrested after tying one on.  Why they would come to the land of sports bars for a night out and not expect to get into some sort of altercation with a drunk yinzer that was somehow offended by their last game is beyond me.

     Almost every record store has closed or changed hands.   Most of the late night diners are gone. The 31^st St. Pub is closed.  The Electric Banana is gone but at least now it's a really good Italian restaurant that's still owned by Johnny and Judy.  The spot where Graffiti used to be is now a showroom for cars that no one in this town can afford to buy.

     It seems like every bit of culture and uniqueness has been scrubbed clean from these neighborhoods for the sake of making everything the same like we all live in Disney Land no matter where we go.  The only good thing that seems to have come out of all this corporate skull fuckery is that the dirty Arby's on Forbes Ave. is finally gone.  If you thought your local Arby's was bad, it would deserve Michelin stars after you went to the dirty Arby's on Forbes Ave.  If every other place was closed or too crowded after a show, I would always choose to head home hungry rather than go to the dirty Arby's.  The simplest of orders would be wrong and served with a shoe print.  The tables were never cleaned and floors were worse than a movie theater after a kids movie.  It is one of the mysteries of the world how they weren't shut down by the health department.

     Most of this belly aching is just my pining for the good old days that never really were.  Expecting the world to be the same as I left it, when I'm ready to step back into it, is just plain foolishness.  But if I were still able to stay up past 9:30pm to go to a late show to see bands play, I would have no idea where to go.

     It seems that the artist colonies that used to be in Oakland and on the South Side have moved over a neighborhood or two to get away from the white washing of corporate gentrification.  East Liberty and Lawrenceville have had performance spaces and oddball restaurants popping up from the folks that fled the University of Pittsburgh's sprawling takeover.

     With Black Forge Coffee, Onion Maiden and Skull Records, Allentown, the shitty neighborhood that I grew up in, seems to be bouncing back. There are still a ton of empty storefronts and I'm sure one of them could hold a 31^st Pub type venue that would ply the crowd with PBR while a new band cuts its teeth.

      I ran into Alex from Submachine a few weeks ago and asked him where they play since everything closed.  He said that there are more places to play now than ever.  You just have to be willing to look for them.  That's my problem with change.  Now I have to do research instead of just knowing where to go.  I'm too busy googling “What's this growth on my scalp?” to try to find out where bands play these days.  The quandaries of struggling to hang on to my youth.  It's enough to make me say, “Fuck it.  I'll stay on the couch.”

Slayer Is My Copilot

     It was recently announced that Slayer will be hanging it up after one last victory lap around the world.  At first I didn't think too much of it.  Then it started to sink in that after 30 some years there will be a morning when I wake up and there will be no more Slayer.

     Slayer could be put on the very short list with bands like the Ramones and Motorhead that I always thought would be there.  Bands that we all thought would be there until the end and so we ended up taking them for granted because they were so steady with their output and relentless touring.

     My vision of a dystopian, apocalyptic future planet seems to include a scene where Keith Richards and Lemmy are throwing rocks at each other in competition for the last piece of cockroach carcass while the Ramones and Slayer are their respective backing bands.  But if the past few years have taught us anything, nothing lasts forever.

     The simple fact that Slayer made it out of the 1980s as a band is no small feat.  This was during the rise of MTV when all of these Christian/parent groups started to feign outrage over the content of music videos and song lyrics.  They were able to walk into the living room while little Timmy was rocking out and became offended because they forgot they're from a generation that grew up listening to a band called Black Sabbath.  This also coincided with Tipper Gore wanting to censor and put warning labels on records because she feared children would engage in premarital sex and animal sacrifice if they listened to anything that wasn't suitable for the Lawrence Welk Show.

     And let us never forget the three kids, from West Memphis, Arkansas, that were convicted of murders they didn't commit because they had Slayer records in their collections and wore black.  And don't forget the three kids who were murdered and whose killer still breathes free air because the local law enforcement had a belief in witchcraft as if it were the 1600s.

     I did not grow up with MTV because my family was one of the last in the neighborhood to get cable and when we did it was the below basic package which was pretty much only clear reception of the local channels so we wouldn't need bunny ears anymore.  And I find it very odd that as much as my parents' generation hated Communism they sure did want all of their children to be the same.  Culture was bad.  Anything that was different was bad.  Fear of the “Other” was rampant even if they weren't able to acknowledge it.  Art wasn't needed.  “Shut the fuck up, get a meaningless day job and repeat our mistakes” was the order of the day.  Reagan was president and authority could do no wrong.

     I was shipped off to an all boys Catholic high school for reasons I am still not sure of.  The most important lessons I learned there were to distrust any person in a position of authority and that religion was an outdated bag of bullshit.  So much so that I don't even consider myself to be an atheist.  It's amazing how much work atheists put into believing in nothing.  I have more important things to do than discuss who's imaginary friend is more righteous than someone else's.  Humanity really needs to evolve past religion of any kind because it is no longer necessary and is used to manipulate the masses into acting against their own best interests.  Christianity's only valuable contribution to modern society has been the fish fry.

     My first encounter with Slayer was after I had graduated high school and was working at a sandwich shop.  I was still trying to find my way in the world and didn't know shit about music beyond the same forty songs that were played ad nauseam on the local modern rock radio station.  I didn't really have any friends, let alone friends that were into music.  One of my coworkers at the sandwich shop was into metal and sang in a band.  Instead of standing there in silence because of my social ineptitude, he tried to crack open the conversation by asking me what music I liked.  I responded with Helmet, Tool and the Rollins Band.  A few days later, he came in with a stack of CDs to put under my snout.  There was Vision of Disorder's self-titled record, Turmoil's From Bleeding Hands and Slayer's Diabolous In Musica.  I was hooked.   I thought I had a problem with Christianity.  Boy, was I wrong.  Slayer made a living out of having a problem with Christianity.

     As the years went by and the more I listened, Slayer started to take more of a Spinal Tap/Monty Python position in my brain.  Very subtle humor that you'd miss if you weren't looking or were taking things too seriously.  How is a line like, “I keep the Bible in a pool of blood so that none of its lies can affect me” not funny.  To do so does not seem very practical.  The visual of a Bible in a Tupperware, soaking in blood, while looking for something to put leftovers in makes me laugh every time I picture it.  And don't forget the episode of South Park when Cartman played Slayer over the PA at a jam band concert to rid the town of hippies.  So, yes, Slayer warms my heart and makes me happy when I listen to their records.

     We no longer live in a time where every few years a Slayer record would be unleashed upon the earth like a monster escaping from an underground government bunker.  No one makes records like Slayer.  Nor should they try.  There is a formula to what they do but that formula belongs to Slayer because they execute it with precision every time.  People may try to criticize the band by saying that they only do one thing and release the same record over and over.  But Slayer does that one thing so well and with so much intensity that I am never bothered by it like I would be with other bands.  It used to be that I would find myself getting bored with metal then Slayer would swoop in and save the day with a new album.  I'm not going to have that anymore and I see no other band that releases records that frequently that could fill that void.

     Even with the changing moods of Dave Lombardo, which took him in and out of the band for various reasons, and the loss of Jeff Hanneman, Slayer was always consistent from album to album. Those records weren't made in studios.  They had to have been made in a laboratory under strict supervision so as to not infect the surrounding areas.  The release of Diabolous In Musica followed by God Hates Us All has got to be one of the greatest one-two punches in music history.

     Unfortunately, I only got to see them play live once.  It was at an ice rink, in the middle of nowhere, on one of those Jagermeister sponsored package tours.  The sound was awful because of the echo off of the concrete walls and bleachers.  If you closed your eyes, you wouldn't have been able to tell where the stage was located.

     And sadly, I will be skipping their last show in the Pittsburgh area.  It's at one of those Clear Channel owned, cookie cutter outdoor amphitheaters.  I just can't bring myself to overpay through Ticketmaster for the ticket and then have to pay to park in order to use binoculars to watch Slayer play on a big TV while the sound is blown away by the wind.  I would be endlessly frustrated by the crowd and the facility that it would be better for all involved if I abstained.

      I will say that I will be first in line for the release of Tom Araya's solo acoustic record when it comes out.  If Buzz from the Melvins can put something like that out, why can't Tom?