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?