Say hello to your new friend: DoDIY.org.

I was happy to totally randomly come across this very modest, yet enormously useful resource while searching for who-knows-what the other day. It’s basically a listing of DIY venues in the US and Canada, but unlike other sites that try/have tried to do this sort of thing, Do DIY succeeds by keeping its focus realistic, and actually keeping its listings up-to-date and free of fake indie bullshit.

Public Space One in Iowa City, IA (photo by Neil Campau)

Neil Campau of the band WORLD HISTORY maintains the site pretty much all on his own out of his home in Seattle, or wherever he happens to be on tour. I wondered how he managed to keep the listings current, as DIY venues tend to come and go pretty frequently. Neil says:

“It’s all kinds of work, but I get a lot of nice messages from people letting me know that venues are defunct or contacts have changed.  I also spend lots of time booking shows myself, so that helps me keep in the know. And I try go through all of the links on the site once a year.”

As for the criteria for what the site will and will not list, he says that the venues “have to be open to everyone (i.e., all ages),” and, “No sexist, racist, homophobic, ageist, ableist, etc.-kinda-bullshit allowed in their listings.”

It’s heartening to see that ideals like this still matter to a lot of people, and it exemplifies what impresses me so much about this basic, no-frills website. Each venue (or house in many cases) gives a short description of itself, and just skimming through the listings (a seemingly boring endeavor, kinda like reading the phone book) really makes you realize how awesome this DIY thing is, that we have all created and have a hand in keeping alive.

Neil says his plans for the future of  include expanding the resources section, and starting to include listings of venues outside of the US. We hope see the site continue its mission for good while. Viva DIY!

We’re sick to death of answering emails all day long from people asking us where to find more Turkish punk rock to listen to. Now there is a blog that provides everything you’d ever want and more. It’s called Turkish Punk! Go to it. Download the Turkish punk music. Listen to the Turkish punk music. Be satisfied that all your Turkish punk needs are now fulfilled, and that you may go on with your life as it once was. Peace be with you.

And now, a Google translation. I’m sure it’s perfect:

Nereye dinlemek için daha çok Türk punk rock bulmak için bize soran kişilerin gün boyu e-posta yanıtlama ölümüne hasta konum. Şimdi her zamankinden daha istediğimiz her şeyi sunan bir blog var. Turkish Punk denir! Bunu gidin. Download Türk punk müzik. Türk punk müzik dinleyin. Tüm Türk punk ihtiyaçlarını şimdi yerine getirmek memnun ve bir zamanlar olduğu gibi senin yaşamına devam olabileceğini olun. Barış seninle olsun.

If you’ve ever had the fortune of stumbling upon the Kill Your Pet Puppy blog site, you know that it contains an almost overwhelming stockpile of rare and interesting ephemera from the early ’80s UK anarcho-punk diaspora. One does not skim KYPP but gets utterly lost in its myriad of downloads, interviews, photos, anecdotes, flyers and reminiscences. No band is too obscure to be covered on Kill Your Pet Puppy, and it’s coverage is certainly not limited to the UK anarcho scene. I asked one of the site’s main forces, Tony Puppy, for background and insight about how and why the website exists. As expected, I got an extensive, in depth reply, but I’ve done my best to filter and regurgitate the highlights here…

Tony D, aka Tony Puppy, was the editor of one of the earliest punk fanzines, Ripped and Torn, from 1976 to 1979. After a brief self-imposed exile to Europe, he got out his typewriter again and started the Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine, which went on public sale at an ADAM AND THE ANTS concert in Camden, North London, on New Year’s Eve 1979. Kill Your Pet Puppy reflected punk life as it was under the newly elected Thatcher cosh: squatting, skinhead NF and British Movement attacks, speed being replaced by Tuinal, and scraping a rainbow life from the hell of reality. Kill Your Pet Puppy was at the forefront of a cultural landscape and an alternative world of squats, squatted venues and self-sufficiency that became known as ‘anarcho punk’. They were liberating times.

KUKL

Kill Your Pet Puppy, the website, was started in October 2007. Feeling that books like The Day the Country Died focused too much on the music and not the ideas and culture of anarcho-punk, Tony, Al Puppy and Penguin (the site’s main contributors) originally planned to write a book of their own, with contributions from various people such as Bob Short from BLOOD AND ROSES (whose pieces on the 3am site were inspirational). As life got in the way of this plan, the KYPP crew instead decided to start a MySpace page, and then a Photobucket site with notable contributions by photographer Mick Lugworm. Gerard of the band FLOWERS IN THE DUSTBIN came into the fray and helped set up the KYPP blog site as it exists today. The website has developed through many people’s photos, scans of printed material, downloadable music and written contributions into a communication point for those who were there, those who wish to know more about the time and as something that is as culturally significant today as it was then.

The Heretics

All musical uploads on Penguin’s posts are from original vinyl or cassettes recorded onto his hard drive through his stereo system. Penguin has informed me in the past that he has not listened to these rare tapes or dusted off some of those rare records he uploads onto the site for many many years! Penguin has continued to source and upload the most incredible stuff, such as a clutch of CRASS rehearsal tapes and many many live recordings from the most obscure venues of the most obscure but much loved bands of the time. He has also uploaded many alternative mix cassettes by bands like LACK OF KNOWLEDGE and POISON GIRLS. Nowhere in the world have these tapes ever been issued, premiered only on Kill Your Pet Puppy (although no doubt by now, some bloggers would have ripped Penguin’s original links of his original material for their own sites – but that is cool).

Some of the biggest contributions, though, are entered by browsers in the comments sections attached to the posts, where topics take off and build to a life of their own. It has been great to see the site grow through our readers’ input, which is the reason it was set up as a blog rather than a web-site: I wanted it to be a participatory experience and it has done that in spades. The site has over 700 comments on one post alone, and over 500 on another. The site to date has over 800 individual posts with over 15,000 comments attached to said posts. Many many old punks that were around in the scene in the late ’70s and early ’80s have now found each other again through this site a long way before Facebook style ‘punks reunited’ sites were existing.

One young punk who was convicted of ‘murder’ in the squats of Campbell Buildings, Waterloo, in the summer of 1980 when he was still a teenager has recently been sent letters of support and presents from Kill Your Pet Puppy browsers to his prison cell, and it is a pleasant feeling to know that the ‘Free Gary Critchley’ campaign was started from the comments section on a post from Kill Your Pet Puppy. A fact which I still find rather remarkable and touching, even more so if he were to be rightly released.

I asked for some tips on where to start, since the site is quite overwhelming on first viewing. Most of the suggestions are linked in the text of this post, but there are a few more below. Now, as Tony says, “Get on the site and fill your boots!”

The Mob‘s No Doves Fly Here post with Mark and Josef commenting in the text

Mike and Toxic Grafity CRASS edition fanzine

and finally, KILLING JOKE, written by Malicious Damage Operatives

Forgive my being “old dude” here for a minute, but back in the day local scenes had zines. I know zines still exist, but they don’t necessarily serve the same function as they used to. Xeroxed fanzines were a tangible way of keeping people connected when there was no internet to tell you exactly what was going on and what all of the other punks in the world were listening to and talking about. Sometimes local zines served as sources of information, but more often than not they were merely a way of validating your small group of punks’ connection to the larger universe of the “scene.”

For those of us in really small towns, it felt almost like a bluff. You could write about hanging out at your local café or about your friends’ band that only practiced twice, but damn did they fucking rule! Put it in a zine and it made it seem real and important. And after a while, it actually did become important — not because other people believed it, but because you started to believe in it yourself.

Not to overstate it too much, I hope, but when I look at Grand Rapids Is Screaming, a blog site “dedicated to West Michigan punk and hardcore,” I see a rare example of something on the internet actually feeling like a tangible fanzine with some soul and local flair.

Remember e-zines? No, neither do I. That’s probably because it was a total failure of a concept. “It’s like a zine, but on your computer!” Um, I’m pretty sure they just call that a website… or maybe an email newsletter. Anyway, possibly without even intending to, Grand Rapids Is Screaming has reinvented the e-zine in a way that makes so much sense I’m surprised more people aren’t doing it.

At first glance it’s just a blog site, very much like the one you’re reading here, but dig deeper and you’ll find well presented local resources like an upcoming show calendar and an extensive, and very impressive, West Michigan flyer archive. You’ll find columns that range from the rambling to the political to your basic photo blog — all of which somehow have a more personal, less internetty feel in the context of this site. Maybe just calling them “columns” instead of “blogs” does the trick. [Note to self! —ed.]

Just peruse the site yourself and you’ll find something to dig. My favorites: show reviews — especially this one which was either mis-formatted for the web or was actually written as poetry (either way it’s pure gold), and reader comments like this one on a column about DIY haircuts:

One thing I think that is criminally overlooked by this column: COMPOSTING. If you’re not composting your hair you should really ask yourself why you HATE THE FUCKING PLANET?

It seems obvious that Grand Rapids Is Screaming is serving its intended purpose: to keep the local scene informed and involved, but I  hope that other punks will get as much inspiration out of this as I do. Now go start your own locally-based  fanzine-like internet blog site/resource!

(Not as catchy a slogan as I was hoping for there. I’ll keep working on it…)

A friend of mine described this blog as looking like “sXe porn.” [Are you allowed to quote your own editor? —ed.] If, like me, you own probably a few too many Crucial Response records and a varsity jacket, this won’t put you off, but if that isn’t the case for you don’t let this stop you from checking out Double Cross.  As you might be able to guess from the first page, this started as something geared towards the ’88 youth crew end of punk, with in-depth coverage of this era by people who are still passionate about all things crucial and probably still have fades.  But since starting out it has expanding to cover a wide selection of hardcore bands with just as much passion and detail.

BOLD and a buch of stoked, sweaty dudes (a.k.a. "sXe porn")

The content varies from in-depth interviews with a vast array of bands (as you may guess, mainly of the Revelation/Wishing Well variety, but not just limited to that, as well as plenty of other old hardcore bands) which spread across several entries, recounting stories relating to old venues such as the Anthrax Club, reflections by various people on their favourite records, photographer features (including one of old Boston crew photos taken by Gail Rush), a tale of being the “minder” for HR of the BAD BRAINS for a weekend and a ton of other topics — a lot of which are relating to CHAIN OF STRENGTH, YOUTH OF TODAY, STRAIGHT AHEAD and DANZIG, all of which are good things in my book.

You can tell by reading that all the people involved are still excited and care about the music the cover and makes it great to read and an easy way to lose several hours at a time.

By now you should be familiar with Boston legend and monthly Maximum Rocknroll columnist Al Quint. The publisher of the long-running Boston fanzine Suburban Voice didn’t let the “death” of print media stop him. The paper version ended with issue #46 in 2003, but he’s since moved the zine to the web, where it lives on in blog form. The site is mainly focused on reviews, just like it has since Al’s very first outing in 1982: Suburban Punk (download issue #1 here!). He’s got a fairly wide range of musical tastes, so you get everything from rock and metal to classic punk, new hardcore and some poppier stuff, as well as the occasional personal aside. This is one of the best resources for record and demo reviews anywhere, and quite an undertaking for just one dude.

Brian Walsby and Al Quint, circa 1985

Al’s undying love of music is best appreciated on his weekly online radio show Sonic Overload. The show started out back in 2000 as a real-live radio show called Inflammable Material on Allston-Brighton Free Radio. Again, Al didn’t let the demise of this outlet stop him from doing what he loved. Here, you can download two hours (!) of music every week, and it’s a consistently great show. The shows are archived on this blog site, but as yet it’s not available in podcast form. But I guess that’s looking a gift horse in the mouth, and Sonic Overload is one mighty gifty horse.

If you’re interested in checking out some issues of Suburban Voice fanzine from over the years, just hop on over to our friends at Operation Phoenix Records, where you can download this and loads of other classic zines of yore.

Having just reviewed issues number six, seven and eight of ANTIPATIA, a Spanish language zine from Barcelona, Spain, I immediately subscribed to their blog to read the issues I missed and to make sure I will never miss any again! The interviews and reports are some the best I have ever read seamlessly incorporating, music, culture and political themes. The blog gives you access to their archives where you can read every issue up to date with the option of printing them out for yourself. Subjects include all realms punk; a really awesome Cuba punk report, the artist/tape label/zine maker Afeite al Perro, a concise history of industry and war as bedfellows, a heads up to good punk from Barcelona, and much more. There is information about their radio station, Radio Bronka, giving access to radio shows from Spain and beyond (including MRR Radio). The blog also has an events list, flyer archive and photo gallery (check out their new pics of ATENTADO!). You can also order from their distro offering zines, books and music (punk and more) from all over the world. The blog is primarily in Spanish with some English, but non-Spanish speakers can still enjoy it to a degree. It is a bummer for those who can’t speak Spanish, because this is a blog/zine would benefit anyone that wants to learn about punks of other cultures in an intelligent and informed way. You guys are really missing out.

Robert Collins seems like the busiest man in punk sometimes. He’s in too many bands to mention, and if he’s not on tour with one of them, or shitworking at MRR, or touring with the SUBHUMANS (UK), or recuperating from knee surgery, or working his real job, he’s probably spending a good deal of time on his amazing tape blog, TERMINAL ESCAPE.

“TAPES… FUCKING TAPES!!!”
The blog’s own description says it all. Terminal Escape is dedicated to cassette tapes, old and new. Mostly demos, mostly obscure, mostly awesome, and always interesting, Robert has an obvious love for the format, and for music in general. He’s got over 1,000 cassettes in his own collection, and while he admits that tapes are “a total novelty, an archaic format” he insists that any contributions to the site come in as a cassette, even if they started out as a download or a CD. This is the kind of dedication —and insane purism — that we really appreciate here at MRR.

Touring with the SUBHUMANS led to the beginnings of this amazing resource. Vocalist Dick Lucas got tired of hauling his boxes and boxes of old demo tapes each time he moved, so Robert “convinced him that he should ‘donate’ them to someone who appreciates them.” Thus a collection, and a dream, was born. After sitting on the tapes for a while trying to figure out what to do with them, he decided to share them with the world via this blog. With daily postings, and informative write-ups on each tape, Terminal Escape is a must-bookmark for a quick shot of random punk or hours of escape (pun totally intended).

We asked Mr Collins, with the abundance of old and long lost material he has made available, if bands ever see their demos on his blog and contact him complain or thank him.

“Thank me, yes. Complain, no. Free music is so pervasive on the internet, I think it’s kind of pointless to try to chase down people soulseeking / blogging / otherwise giving music away. At least with Terminal Escape, I write about everything I post, include contact information whenever available, and include whatever artwork I have (though with a lot of the old tapes I have little or no art or information). Too many blogs are really just a list of links, and I think that is a disservice to the bands who made the music. If someone is downloading music, it’s far better for them to have background and/or context. A few ’80s bands have contacted me because I posted songs that they thought were long lost, and have asked for my copies to include on discography releases. Of course, the music ‘belongs’ to the bands and/or labels who originally put the effort and money into their release, and I’m always happy to remove any posts if that is the artists’ desire.”

When asked to pick a demo he really loves and tell us about it, Robert replied:

“The CONVULSIONS Electro Convulsive Therapy. There is just something about the band’s approach on this tape, they are so gloriously off, and giving 1000% as if their life depended on it. A brilliant recording. Honorable mentions: THE ILLEGITIMATE SONS OF JACKIE O and CONCEPT OF NONSENSE demos (late 80s Oklahoma) were probably the first two non-mainstream punk recordings that I heard. I got them on a mix tape from a girl I met at competitive drama contests…doesn’t get much geekier than that, does it?”

No, it really doesn’t. So geek out at Terminal Escape. There are tons of tapes to download and read about, and there’s a plenty more to come too…

“I’ve got enough demos to keep the site running daily for another 2-3 years without accumulating any more tapes. Obviously I hope that I will accumulate more, and can keep the site going for longer…who knows when I will get sick of it.”

.

Time to get out yer atlases, punks… In keeping with this week’s Southeast Asian theme, here’s a blog site dedicated to the current punk scene in, of all places, Borneo! The Borneo DIY Hardcore Punk site is mostly dedicated to promoting local shows, and is worth perusing for some rad flyer art, if nothing else. But what caught my attention was the blog’s mission statement, which is impressive and inspiring. Read on about the site, in its own words, while I watch this awesome looking documentary about Malaysia’s independence that I found here…

This blog is established in the late 2008 with the intention to promote and facilitate the DIY Hardcore Punk (and any DIY music genre, really) in the continent of Borneo, split into three by political borders bordering Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. It is our hope that this blog would function as a platform, a bulletin and a means of communications for all the scenes and individuals spread in this part of the world.” Having said that, this blog is non-partisan and would like to communicate with all the bands out there, all over the world to communicate with us. It is a sort of method to claim our existence in the global punkosphere.

Please get in touch with us! We would like to host any bands out there on our couches or floors at our home! The fact remain that there has already been a strong DIY Hardcore Punk/anarchist/activist network that has already been established. Take this blog as an extension to share with other friends who are not fortunate enough to have such network, so that all of us could benefit from it.

This blog is a community-based blog. We welcome all sorts of contribution to make this blog happen. This blog is run by a crew of odd people doing all sorts of odd jobs with one thing in mind: to see a more fertile scene happening here. By the punks for the punks.

Leave a comment on any of the post, or email us at: agentprovo {at} gmail(.)com should there be any inquiries, comments, feedback, notifications of gigs and events happening in Borneo.

No homophobic, sexist, racist, non-DIY stuffs, CDs, events, merchandises would be accommodated. I’m sorry but this is not the channel for those stuffs! Thank you.