NEW TRENDS NEW TRENDS

NEW JAMS NEW JAMS
Imagine my joy when I discovered that the Masturbator demo had been pressed to vinyl! Holy fuck can't wait to get this in the mail. I'm going to Peru in September so I gotta get studied on my Peruvian punk so I can turn up all the rares the Inca Trail has to offer. Also, speaking of South American punk, I can't stop staring at the pic on the Ataque de Sonido insert where the singer is wearing a Raw Power shirt and reading the lyrics off a piece of paper. So cool.

GOOD THROB! The best. Bile and humor. Can't fucking wait to see them in Chicago.


Slum of Legs is the best too. Best non-rap Beyonce shout-out song ever? Really killer UK DIY jams for the end times.

DOLLAR BIN RIPPERS OF NOTE (perhaps available at your local record emporium)
C.R.A.S.H. - War on All Fronts 7" ("Cult Merch" so sick! This record is worth between 1 and 3 dollars. Don't pay more.)
Young Identities - New Trends 7"
Asbest 7"s! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7PPamkm0kw

NOTES ON MY DISCOVERY OF THE FLYING NUN CATALOG
Kai said the Verlaines sound like Train "Drops of Jupiter" so I can probably never listen to them again. Scorched Earth Policy is the best. Dark stuff. Toy Love reminds me of They Might Be Giants mixed with the Buzzcocks? I like them though. (I used to really like TMBG.) Almost ready to step to Look Blue Go Purple. Where do I start with the Gordons? College rock apotheosis 2014.

ETC.
I sold a Pantera LP for $55 to a guy in Russia and I eat so many Clif Builder Bars I deserve to be sponsored.

I was born, so now I suffer

Books I read recently:

Two Lives by Janet Malcolm (ruined by one horrible precious sentence describing a small child, shame.)
Speedboat by Renata Adler (great, gonna read Pitch Dark next. Should I revisit Didion in light of the comparisons between her and Adler? I hated her so much when I read her a few years ago.)
The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order by Kate Eichhorn (professional prodding. Get out there and get a fucking career Shiv.)
A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey (great)
No Regrets: Three Discussions edited by Dayna Tortorici (great though insular interrogation of identity formation through reading. The greatest idea I got from this was the one that left me feeling the most out of the loop. I want a secret canon with my friends! My record buds and I have one, but though I feel so strongly that I am a reader I so rarely discuss books with my friends and I don't feel like we are united by a canon at all. I tried to have a conversation with a coworker about books the other day and the way she shirked away from naming titles made me so sad because I do it too. No more of this.)

Books I am in the middle of:

Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem (making no progress, since this book isn't very good. Lethem was a teenage favorite of mine but he is so vicious to his characters. Why?)
Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit (put it down and completely forgot about it, feeling like picking it up again after it was mentioned in the aforementioned No Regrets.)
Heroines by Kate Zambreno (almost done, I hate the way she writes about herself and her partner in this book so much, and I hate her obsession with class and geography in this book, but there is good stuff too. I think I need to think and write about this more in the coming weeks.)

New records I bought and enjoyed:

Irreparables - Demo 2011 LP
Household - Elaines LP (I cannot recommend this enough, I love them. First record got so many spins, this is getting so many spins. "Panorama" and "A New Leaf" are standouts.)
La Misma - s/t 7"

Punk fashion icon now and forever:

The woman from Livin' Sacrifice with the homemade Ramones shirt and Johnny haircut

BYE

Best of 2013

Top Fives of 2013 (why the hell not?)

Shows
5/10/2013 UV Race/Gun Outfit in FARGO, ND!
6/17/2013 Big Eyes in Minneapolis, MN
8/6/2013 Criaturas in Minneapolis, MN
9/7/2013 Gas Rag/Condominium/Kontrasekt in Minneapolis, MN
12/28/2013 Varix/Wild Forest/Fucker SS/Zero/Systema Inmundo in Minneapolis, MN
(honorable mention to Total Trash and Teenage Moods for being the best local bands I've never seen, also shout out to Take Offense and San Diego hc, sickest crossover laughing intro)

7"s
Good Throb - Culture Vulture 7" (Muscle Horse) (best English punk band since Crass)
Total Trash - s/t 7" (self-released)
Replica - s/t 7" (Prank)
Gas Rag - Human Rights 7" (Beach Impediment)
Varix - I Can't Get Out 7" (Fashionable Idiots)

LPs
Radioactivity - s/t LP (Dirtnap)
Cremalleras - s/t LP (Cintas Pepe)
Culo - My Life Sucks... LP (Deranged)
Vixens - s/t LP (La Vida es Un Mus)
Tony Molina - Dissed and Dismissed LP (Melters)

Reissues/Archival (new to vinyl/new to me stuff only)
Neo Boys - Sooner or Later 2xLP (K/Mississippi)
Androids of Mu - Blood Robots LP (Water Wing)
Sado Nation - Disrupted Patterns LP (Gummopunx)
Altercation - s/t 7" (Lush Life)
The High and the Mighty - Crunch On Demo 7" (Radio Raheem) (more Drew Stone music video masterworks in 2014 please)

TC Bonzer Champ
Yours truly
4 other people  

Best Supernatural Encounter
Seeing a skeleton move on its own in a forest in Winnipeg

Best Record Store
Extreme Noise Records, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America, god bless
(honorable mention to Hymie's and Treehouse (thx 4 the bonzers) and Standards!)

Life Lessons for 2014
Just cuz you can eat all the food on your plate at a restaurant doesn't mean you should
Don't ever leave the Midwest it's heaven on earth
Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone

Vids n stuff

 

 

RECORD REVIEWS!

I bought some records and stuff.

Total Trash - s/t 7" (self-released, 2013)
Total Trash is from Minneapolis but somehow I've never seen them. I suppose I lean towards the "history-minded Saturday-night-stay-home-and-read punker" end of things, so that isn't much of a surprise, but after getting this 7" I'm sold on them (despite having always been turned off by the ICP irony and summertime beanie vibes, and two pretty middling-to-obnoxious--and not in a good way!--tapes). The first song has some doomy Ginn-esque feedback squalls and "oooh"s echoing through the background and a funny sing-songy rhyming scheme that I found distracting. Then we get "Misanthropy." I don't even think this is THE hit (I mean, it is for me, but "Jean Genet" could be an indie radio hit, with this totally great sweeping riff, positive lyrics, and more sung vocals that would go well on a tape with Potty Mouth or even, dare I say, Crash Diagnostic-era Discount), but man, this track is so good. Jessica's vocals get in the red at the best moments. "Take It Straight" and "Heady Times" are pretty straightforward hardcore songs, but both are good. I wish this record had lyrics to go with the nice screenprinted covers because I think I like them, but who knows?! There's also a sample from Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains for added lady punx cred. (Sidenote: two people have told me recently that they saw that movie when they were 13. Admittedly I would have fallen asleep because it's a movie and I hate those (jk, kinda), but I wish I had seen that when I was 13! Oh well.) The production is pretty raw and the instruments bleed together, but I think with a cleaner sound this would be too polished. Worth your time and $6 or whatever. totaltrash.bandcamp.com

Kaos - Ayacucho Centro de Opresion 7" (Odio los Discos/Sin Temores/Discos Huayno Amargo, 2008)
Ok, so to my shame, I once owned this record and sold it to Extreme Noise. I bought it back today after hearing "No" on a podcast. It's weird that I sold it because I think I've had the title track stuck in my head since the first time I owned it. Kaos formed in Lima, Peru, in 1986 and recorded the material on this record in 1989.  The vocal style is really similar to the dude from their countrymen Ataque Frontal, and the singer really lets loose on "No," screaming his head off over a fast-slow-really fast tune. SO RIPPING! Eternal mixtape fodder! All the songs on this record are great, mostly fast tunes with nary a guitar solo in sight. "X" has a melodic, mid-tempo start before revving up and slowing down again. "Ayacucho Centro de Opresion" follows the same formula (albeit less melodic) with a savage whisper-to-scream vocal bit. Excellent hardcore.

Brilliant Colors - Introducing (Slumberland, 2009)

Their loud pop/C86 reinterpretation of "99 Luftballoons" speaks for itself, no?

 

Apocryphal butt enlargement stories

Hello internet, I just read two more books and bought approximately 100000 records of varying quality and stomped around in the snow and ice in my makeshift snow suit. I ate shit on Lake Street but survived to ride my bike around on ice like an idiot once more. Fun and exhilarating and sweaty and scary.

First of all I read In the Freud Archives (1984) by Janet Malcolm. I suspect I will read all of her books and not have much to say about them beyond relating anecdotes and being a bit wowed by her smarts. This book was also wonderful, rich with incisive and telling details and hilarious in its generational spats. Malcolm gets a lot of shit for being icy and mean, and I definitely see it and find it a bit off-putting at times, particularly when out of nowhere she slips herself into her writing. I feel totally blindsided in those moments, like "there's a real person behind this?" She's great though, and I will read more soon.

I read The Flamethrowers (2013) by Rachel Kushner too. Much has been written about her ear for dialogue and how incredible her writing is, and it is. Reno, the book's protagonist, is constantly on the receiving end of blather from her friends in the art world, long-winded men of various stripes from misogynist to neurotic (and undoubtedly the two intersect). She also suffers this fate at the hands of her boyfriend's mother, a cruel Italian plutocrat who relates the following anecdote:

A cousin who went to sub-Saharan Africa and was bitten by a tsetse fly and got elephantitis in his buttocks. He'd had to purchase special-order trousers with a gigantic seat, Sandro's mother said, and he slept with a platform extension at the side of the bed, to support his ass. (226)

This is a complete aside from the plot (though it is very much a part of what makes this book so wonderful, these details!), but it is up there in butt elephantitis stories with the one about the inaccuracy of the painting of Washington crossing the Delaware (due to thyroid issues, he had a gigantic butt and would have fallen out of the boat or sunken it entirely). Favorite historical apocrypha genre.

Anyway, Reno (we never learn her real name) comes to New York from Reno and falls in with the downtown art scene, and begins to date a wealthy son of privilege whose family owns a motorcycle and rubber empire. Reno had been a motorcycle racer and artist before, but now in New York she falls under the specter of the much older Sandro, whose connections in those worlds subsume her prior engagement with them. Kushner describes Sandro as elegant, yet all he seems to do is skirt away from his family's past and have sex with Reno in public. Reno is a great protagonist and narrator though, witty and observant and capable, and Kushner plops her down in the middle of these great times of upheaval and she completely holds her own. I found her eminently relatable and cool. A wonderful entertaining book about badass girls getting theirs.

Currently reading Wanderlust (2000) by Rebecca Solnit, more to come on that... I'm a huge fan of Solnit so I'm hoping it will become more focused as I read more, cuz right now it's a bit all over the place.

Can't stop jamming these songs below... It's funny the stuff you come around to.

 

 

 

Why do I feel gross after eating cookies and watching Trailer Park Boys all day? Ugh.

Video dump part 1 of one million

Sure why not?