When hearing Soot, conservative ears may feel like they might have in 1977 when stumbling upon, say, the Sex Pistols, or in 1956 when hearing Cecil Taylor. “What the hell is this racket?” they will grumble. Or maybe they’ll just shrug, impatient to clean their eardrums with some mild goth-punk. An exaggeration? Yeah, right. If […]
Read full "What I Do Is Little of My Own Business (An Interview with SOOT)" interview
In 2006, Scott Soriano (SS Records) interviewed Tom Lax (Siltbreeze Records) for Terminal Boredom. When Soriano declared The Fugs «the first great American punk band», Lax agreed they were «great on so many levels; they were provocateurs, city radicals, literate, thinking, rapier-sharp people.» «Aha!» commented Soriano; «words like that will get you crucified by today’s ‘punk rockers’!»
Read full "Provocateurs & City Radicals" column
Yup, it’s October and your MRR column class has resumed. Time to get edjumacated. Or at least find a way to cope with what’s going to happen over the next 8-10 months—that’s if you’re still involved in some kind of academic pursuit or have college students disrupting your otherwise-tranquil life. Educational topics have long been […]
Read full "Back In School" column
Preening presently thrives as this wonderfully terse and honking punk act from Oakland, California. The band members—Alejandra Alcala (bass/vox), Sam Lefebvre (drums) and Max Nordile (sax/vox)—are all fixtures in various local punk and punk-adjacent communities, each playing in multiple bands, making art and actively assessing and reshaping things from the inside.
Read full "Preening Interview" interviewWoah! Sorry folks! Pete and Langford have been soaking up that summer sun hardcore now that spring’s over. They were way to ‘laxed out at the beach.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:27 — 59.0MB)
SHAMELESS PLUG: This column has blossomed into a new book: Teaching Resistance: Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom, coming out this October on esteemed imprint PM Press! Check out the slick promo video (with a soundtrack from THE MINUTEMEN, thanks Mike Watt) and presale link right here! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ww3/teaching-resistance-radicals-in-the-classroom-the-book Ultra-radical punk teachers! Yes, I […]
Read full "Ultra-radical punk teachers!" column
Welcome to the fuckin’ future! No more ink-stained fingers, no more magazines lost in the mail, no more having to wait a month to see your column in print because somebody forgot to run it…you know, the future isn’t that bad if you really think about it. Of course, life isn’t all cyber-rainbows and byte-rflies […]
Read full "Welcome to the Fuckin’ Future!" column
Nicolas Walter was born in England in 1934 to a family of dissenters. He wrote or edited for a number of radical rags in the early ‘60s until he retired in the early ‘00s. Although the following story is a digression I think it might best exemplify the author’s credentials as mentioned in his daughter’s […]
Read full "About Anarchism" review
I saw Bikini Kill play at Brixton Academy last week. The former music hall has a sloping floor, I had the distinct impression of nearly falling but not quite, tripped up by strangely apt gradients. I was too young to be an OG riot grrrl and way too into the Cro-Mags to ever find my way […]
Read full "No More Bad Future" column