October 2010

Nihilistics: Hardcore’s Post-81 Highpoints

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It’s kind of comforting that after the early eighties, hardcore broke down into disparate camps, making the long march through auld tyme material a bit easier than with genres like post-punk or whatever else.

Yeah, all the hard-rock cum hardcore or just plain metal stuff is a tremendous bore. And apart from the slow, sludgey stuff from the south, what remains from hardcore’s post-81 highpoints are really just retreads of the first wave. It’s the same for any genre, though.

On Tony Rettman and Killed By Hardcore (Part One)

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First things first. Thanks to Rettman for writing on a much dismissed topic in a reasonably intelligent manner. And thanks to Blastitude for posting it a ways back. Lastly, head over to Punk Not Profit and peruse those posts. It’s kind of like an encyclopedia for shut-ins.

What all of this has to do with, though, is the backwards glance, the re-evolution of something (anything) through the guise of a few years on. That’s not bad or good, but an interesting way to assess a movement or an endgame that was once, most likely, just short of tangible.

Urgh! A Music War: Alternative Music as Product

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This was actually something of a trial to wade through.

Urgh! A Music War isn’t a proper snapshot of underground music dating from the last portion of the seventies and into the eighties. In fact, probably the only performance ‘punks’ would consider punk, would be the Dead Kennedy’s song included here.

Sure, Joan Jett cranks out an anthem, but even at the tender age of twenty, she’d already moved a bit away from whatever the Runaways were and further into a hard rock scene, that the singer admittedly enervated with some excitement. Spiky haired punkers, though, probably weren’t moved too much by her track.

A Minute with Johnny Witmer from the Stitches (Part One)

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PM: Do you still skate?

Johnny Witmer: Yes I still skate. I try to do it as much as possible. I can still do pivot to fakie on any ramp.

PM: You gotta day job – how ‘bout the rest of the folks you play music with?

JW: No. Most of the guys are professional drug addicts. We all hustle, though. 2 of the Stitches guys are professional sober guys now.

PM: What prompted you to start The Crazy Squeeze?

TWOFR: The Locust x Soccer Team

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The Locust

Safety Second, Body Last

(Ipecac Recordings, 2005)

This compact disc holds just over ten, that’s correct, ten minutes of music.  Yet some how, Mike Patton and his team of savvy indie-music biz moneygrubbers have deemed this slab worthy of a ten, that’s correct, ten-dollar price tag.  Now, whether or not I’m a fan of Patton and his various projects, I refuse to allow such a blatantly ridiculous occurrence to go uncommented upon.  So, let’s take time out here so that I may begin a dialogue with said label boss.  Ahem.  Sir.  I am part of the record buying populace and find the pricing of your labels latest single to be exorbitant.  Firstly, the pretension of squeezing eight (or whatever the number maybe) songs onto two tracks is blindingly repulsive.  Secondly, when I purchase a record by a group such as The Locust, I am not looking for minimalist electronic music (which occurs sometime during the first track), I’m solely looking for some (retardedly) short blasts of HC violence.  Furthermore, Mr. Patton, while I appreciate the space noises and what occasionally sounds like Devo playing HC, I simply loose myself in the space of a seven minute screed of noise that is the first track.  I can tell, sir, that the band meticulously planned out this recording, replete with videogame and cricket noises, but I simply want more for my money.  You see, I have a job that pays seven dollars an hour.  So I have to work 1.428 hours just to buy this record.  I don’t find that quite acceptable.  Please get back to me when you get a chance.  Thanks again.

The Reatards: Up in the Bedroom, Disasters

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Punk’s a weird animal. And the Reatards were the three-legged horse of the punk scene during the late nineties and into the augties. But, ya know what? That’s good.

Disbanding the group, though, served as entrance into high visibility for Jay Reatard. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it to the other side, instead petering out in an excess of attention. At least the man enjoyed a good deal of (underground) success during his final years.

Toxin III: Not as Racist as Skrewdriver, but at least it's American

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The most incredible thing about Toxin III and how some folks from the backwoods of Louisiana found punk in the waning moments of the seventies is that a piece written by Nick Tosches for Rolling Stone on Patti Smith interested band members.

That’s a tremendously powerful perspective on journalism. But totally appropriate in some instances.

The Makers Makin' it Through Another Decade

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The state of Washington means a bunch of different things when examined from a distance – any other destination in the States perceives a difference between Seattle, Olympia and Spokane. Of course, malleable views of each basically result in singular visions of that part of the country.

Seattle’s really not as big as people think it is. Olympia is probably more and less than what people expect and by the time one makes it to Spokane, all bets are off. It’s not that outside of Seattle, the rest of Washington is on open space. And that’s certainly not the case with Spokane. But a huge portion of the state – and this goes for most states in the States – counts as rural. Some of its deathly beautiful, but it’s all removed from modern metropolises.

Christian Death: Why Rozz Williams Sounds British

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Spawning whatever constitutes death rock isn’t exactly a career maker. Nor was it, most likely, the point of forming Christian Death. Either way, though, Rozz Williams is often credited with defining a genre that has a foot in goth, straddles punk and winks at metal. So basically, it’s just hard rock.

Forming in 1979 after a few other attempts to start bands, Williams and his cohort, which at the time counted former Adolescents guitarist Rikk Agnew, went in on a single and eventually a full length album, both released by 1982.

Destroy All Monsters: A Detroit Rock Legacy

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More often than not, Destroy All Monsters are couched in terms of its members. And while it’s notable that Ron Asheton (formerly of the Stooges) and Michael Davis (an MC5 player) did time in the group, neither figured into the band’s initial conception. Of course, my mentioning that as entrance into a brief write up on the band does the same thing as figuring each of those men as indispensible in the group’s trajectory. Worse things have happened.

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