It occurred to me recently that for the young teenage mutant just getting into DIY punk, LOS CRUDOS’ existence as a band is as far in the past as BLACK FLAG’s was for me when I first got into hardcore. The ’90s, while still much maligned by punks¹—for reasons both good and bad—are now two decades into history. As hard as it is to believe for those of us who remember them live and in the flesh, the marching on of time has transformed Crudos from a furious new sound annihilating the (then) stale HC scene, into a band from way-back-when whose records you have to search for on eBay or steal from your older sister in order to have. Of course, whether ones relationship to Crudos was formed when the band was still around or through a hand-me-down tape, used record, or fileshare, time has definitively spoken: Los Crudos is one of the absolute greatest punk/HC bands ever.

It would be difficult to exaggerate Crudos’ impact on my punk coming-of-age. I had read about hardcore breaking down the walls between audience and band; Crudos showed me how cathartic that could be with their red-hot live show. I had heard about the do-it-yourself ethic; Crudos showed me how cool it could be to hold a record in my hands that had literally been constructed by my favorite band. I craved punk music that could speak to my emerging political and intellectual ethos; Crudos showed me that a band could be fiercely political but not sloganeering. Indeed, despite all of the shit talk from some subsequent punks on how the ’90s were “too political,” the predominant politics of the day were often little more than a smug blend of holier-than-thou moralizing and irritating liberal angst. Worst of all, it seemed like everyone else had decided that they should give a shit cuz they read it somewhere in a book (or record insert). I felt extremely alienated by just about everything, and I related to none of that navel-gazing bullshit. As far as I could tell, neither did Crudos.

It would be similarly difficult to exaggerate Los Crudos’ influence on the DIY punk scene in general. When they first emerged, the number of people interested in raw international hardcore was microscopic, as the vinyl detritus produced by the tiresome decade-long beard-core trend can attest. Even the other cool USHC bands of the era couldn’t quite boast Crudos’ thrashing ferocity; HIS HERO IS GONE was basically a crust band with melodic (dare I say emo?!) proclivities, BORN AGAINST was more-or-less an Articles of Faith rip-off band with a Crucifucks sense of humor, and what the fuck was up with all those skits on the ANTISCHISM LP? In any case, none of these bands could honestly boast WRETCHED, IMPACT, or ATOXXXICO as their major sonic influences.

I have heard a myth repeated that Crudos created a Latino punk scene out of thin air by singing in Spanish, but the truth is that there have probably been more Spanish-speaking punks than English-speaking punks the world over since approximately punk year zero. Crudos didn’t create Latino punk in the US (they would have been the first to tell you that), but they did help publicize a network that—in large part because of their efforts—no longer toiled in relative isolation.

Despite their prodigious impact across the DIY punk world, Los Crudos was perhaps most influential in their own city. I don’t think that it would be too much of an exaggeration to say that, along with Naked Raygun, Crudos is the definitive Chicago punk band, the Effigies, AoF, etc. be damned. I know a good number of kids from Chicago – brown, white, black, whatever – who proudly claim that they wouldn’t have gotten into punk rock the way that they did without the influence of the crude ones. To this day DIY punk shows in Chicago—north and south side alike—boast more Crudos shirts than I see anywhere else in the US; Chicago just wouldn’t have been the same without Crudos, and Crudos wouldn’t have been the same without Chicago.

***

All of this circumlocution brings us to SIN ORDEN, who in 2000 released their first EP (Brutalidad Junvenil) on Lengua Armada Records, a label run by Martin Sorrondeguy of Los Crudos fame. Based in Chicago’s south side (also home to Crudos, of course) Sin Orden was at the time a bunch of teenaged Latino boys playing in their first ever band. Now, I have no way of knowing how many kids worldwide Crudos has inspired to pick up instruments and thrash ‘til death, but Sin Orden undeniably began as a Crudos worship band in a scene that had equally undeniably come to view Crudos—who broke up in 1998 after seven years as a band—as big brothers.

At the same time that Sin Orden was honing their chops, a revival of the straightforward hardcore approach of the early ’80s was being championed in a DIY HC scene finally over the excesses of emo. The millennium hit, and these bands (What Happens Next?, DS-13, etc.) started wearing bandanas, playing fast HC again, adopting some ’80s aesthetics, and being called Y2K thrash. Because they played fast hardcore in the year 2000, Sin Orden’s first EP was often — erroneously, I think — lumped in with this trend. Why was this classification an error? First of all, Sin Orden was not a self-consciously retro band. Secondly, they didn’t fit in with either the aesthetics or goofball sensibilities of the major West Coast (US) Y2K thrashers, or with the more brooding East Coast bands, many of which were self-consciously rocking a Black Flag vibe. Sin Orden was a serious thrash band, but not one whose major self-expression resulted in the dour manfeelings vibes of bands like Tear it Up.

Now, this first Sin Orden EP did not go unappreciated in its day. It sold out quickly, and I remember it got great reviews at the time. It was often either compared to Crudos or some Y2K band, and most of those comparisons were certainly favorable if not downright excited. And, over the years, Sin Orden has gained a cult following—and one MRR cover story—that could have some arguing that they’re not underrated at all, especially compared to some of the other bands I’ve written about in this forum. Still, looking back I think that the constant comparisons to other bands and the deluge of fast hardcore bands that emerged when the millennium hit meant that, for some, Sin Orden’s first EP got lost in the shuffle.

I can’t believe how infrequently I hear people reference Brutalidad Juvenil. So I will talk about it here. You want to know what I think? I think that Brutalidad raised the bar for how good some random Midwestern teenage hardcore record not from the ’80s could be. This record is not just a period piece; it stands along side the classics. We’re not talking a pretty good band that gets overlooked. We’re talking about an all-time band that needs to take its place on the HC pedestal. Reader, it you are not slamdancing when the needle hits the first groove on this 7”, you are probably not into this kind of music.

Here’s the thing: from day one Sin Orden was—and they probably remain—the best band directly influenced by Los Crudos. But they have never been “just” a Crudos ripoff band. Maybe some old timer who saw their first shows can remember when they were just a “little brother” band, but by the time Brutalidad was recorded, these students had become hardcore masters. And two EPs, two split EPs, and an LP later, they remain masterful punk elder statesmen that some (smart!) young kids are probably trying to emulate as I type. I hope by now that it’s clear that my long intro about Crudos is not meant to further place Sin Orden in Crudos’ shadow, but rather to remind us all about how rock ’n’ roll history is made and then transformed. One band influences another by shaking up an old formula—I mean, no one thought ’80s style hardcore would be made relevant again in the ’90s, and then again in the 2000s—and both bands add enough spark and originality to the formula to make us listen afresh. The cycle continues unabated.

If you’re not yet convinced, just listen to the cyclone-like ferocity of the guitar riff on “Perro Mundo” and tell me that it doesn’t rip. Sin Orden has got everything working on Brutalidad; the caustic vocals are completely unhinged and furious, the guitar sounds timelessly catchy but raw, the lyrics are charming and insightful, and the songs are memorable stompers through and through. (For those of you familiar with the records Sin Orden released after this first one — I don’t think the second EP came out until ’06 or so — I should note that the songs on Brutalidad are not as lightning fast as what that band came to play, but that only helps the riffs stand out all the more.)

And you know what? Sin Orden has been playing vicious, intoxicating thrash for a decade now. Their records are all stalwarts in my collection. I’ve seen them play in both New York and Chicago and they’ve torn it up in both cities to sweaty and appreciative audiences. As far as I know, they are never not good live. But there are a lot of you out there not yet worshipping at the altar of this band. What the fuck are you waiting for?

(Scum facts: 1000 pressed: 900 with regular red and white sleeve, 100 with black and red hand-screened wood cut art and “SOA” hand-stamped on A-side center label & “SOB” hand-stamped on B-side center label.)

¹That is, for those punks not in riot grrrl revival bands, AmRep-style mysterious guy acts, or uh, Milk Music.

Generally speaking, this column—with its focus on punk records from 2000-2009—has two separate but related aspirations. The first is the more ambitious, if not occasionally pretentious: rethinking the conventional interpretations of and opinions on punk rock’s most recent past. I do this because I believe that the big picture of DIY punk music is often more complicated than a game of follow-that-trend would tell you. The second aim is more simple: providing quintessential drooling fanzine appreciations of songs/records/bands that are too eye-poppingly good to ignore, but have perhaps not been given their proper due. This particular installation of We Got Ways is meant to be more of the latter than the former, but in the end it may come back around again.

First, some background…

In the late 1990s into the early 2000s, Discharge-worship was simply not popular in the U.S. hardcore scene. Most bands were still in the throes of the emo (or the bring-your-dog-to-the-show crust) era, and the few interesting bands going were not overtly worshiping at the altar of that one beat popularized by those four blokes from Stoke-on-Trent. There were, however, a few relatively obscure exceptions, most notably some primitive sounding bands manned by a few obsessive, paranoiac, black-clad HC enthusiasts based in (pre-Portlandia) Portland, OR. One such band from that scene was the goofily named DEATHCHARGE, whose first EP (the even more goofily named A Look at Their Sorrow) came out in 1997 to absolutely no fanfare. Of course, given our current moment—in which a band that proudly calls itself “D-CLONE” is popular among DIY punx—it is difficult to comprehend how truly not of the zeitgeist Deathcharge’s Dis-obsessed music (which was simple, raw, minimal, and bordering on pastiche) was in 1997. If they had gained any casual fans with A Look at Their Sorrow, they promptly lost them both by not touring and by waiting four years to release their second EP, 2001’s Plastic Smiles. Despite apathetic responses among the punk masses, both EPs (which were pressed in microscopic quantities) have over the years come to be well regarded by a handful of the most obsessive fanatics of Discharge-influenced raw punk, who champion Deathcharge as a band that carried the torch when others didn’t seem to care. (In this way, the two Deathcharge EPs can be favorably compared to the 1991 Warcry 12” by English D-beaters DISASTER, who played “Discharge-worship HC” at a time when that sub-genre was not yet codified as such. Without a doubt, both bands were true disciples of you-know-who, and as a result subsequent cultish devotees have made these bands part of their pantheon. Readers of this column should take this comparison as both a compliment and a warning: at this point in time—at least for this author—both that Disaster 12” and the first two Deathcharge 7”s are more interesting as historical anomalies than as stone classics of the genre, especially given the transcendent output of recent bands such as, say, FIRMEZA 10.)

***

The few hundred words you just read notwithstanding, this column is not really about those first two good-but-not-great Deathcharge EPs. Rather, it is about one of the best—and most surprising—punk records from the 2000s: Deathcharge’s 2006 two-song single “The Hangman/New Dark Age.” Truth be told, I just spilled so much cyber-ink on those first two DC EPs in large part to accentuate how unexpected “The Hangman” was the first time I tossed it on the turntable. Let me set the scene: it was almost two AM at the MRR HQ in mid-2006, and I was in the midst of assigning that month’s vinyl to reviewers. (That’s how it works at Maximum: someone, usually a coordinator, listens to every record that comes in and decides 1. whether or not it is reviewable, and 2. who will review it.) When I first grabbed the record out of the bin, I raised a skeptical eyebrow at its art, which bore little resemblance to the thin-papered cut ‘n’ paste sleeves of the first two DC records. I grew worried that the record was going to flat out suck: there was a Very Serious Rock Band photo of the boys on the front cover (complete with messy hair, leather jackets, and uh…English Dogs pins…), and their name was written across the front in what seemed to be (horror of horrors!) a font dangerously close to that used on Discharge’s Grave New World. I figured that Deathcharge had tired of crude Discharge worship, or maybe that they had noticed the popularity of bands like INEPSY (not to mention countless less worthy pretenders), who married the D-beat to a Motörhead and/or hard rock vibe. Certainly, they wouldn’t be the first (or regrettably, the last) HC band to “go rock.”

Before I continue, let me say that assigning records at MRR is a fairly thankless task, as it is quite difficult to listen to 75 or so records in a very compressed period of time. It is like eating 30 cupcakes in one sitting—i.e. way, way too much of a good (and sometimes not-so-good) thing. It is a time-consuming process that has little to do with what we usually mean by “listening to records.” The tedium of this task meant that while assigning records, I would listen to each record for only a handful of seconds at a time, get a quick sense of it, and then assign it for review. Occasionally, with bands I liked, I’d listen to a song or two. But once in a great while, I would be rendered unable to lift the needle off the grooves due to some arresting melody or unexpected riffage.

Anyway, back to the story at hand… As I was saying, I put the needle down on “The Hangman” and sat back to listen. That first go ‘round, I listened to the song all the way through. And then I listened to it all the way through again. And then again. I was struck dumb: this song was an unrelenting monster. I had been expecting more-or-less pedestrian Discharge worship but got something else entirely; this version of Deathcharge sounded like a totally different band. Suddenly, the cover photo didn’t seem so cheesy anymore—in fact, it started to seem kinda cool. “The Hangman” was slow (by punk standards), and it rocked, but it was not the dreaded punk ‘n’ roll throwaway. Instead, it was a creeping, lurching, and dark death punk anthem, the likes of which were—unsurprisingly, given Deathcharge’s apparent disinterest in punk trends—utterly unpopular in DIY punk at the time (unlike, ironically, the straightforward D-beat they had played to deaf ears the decade before).

Today it’s 2011 and dark, gloomy punk/HC with anarcho leanings is enjoying a revival in popularity despite the utter mediocrity and soullessness of most bands currently attempting the style. Deathcharge’s “The Hangman,” however, remains a fucking monster. I still put it on mix tapes all the time. The disgusted vocals on this song carry the day; the singer basically just spits and moans the words “ughhh…the hang…maaan” over and over on top of disturbed, claustrophobic, almost goth rock (but still extremely catchy) guitar riffs. Honestly, this single is tough for me to describe, because it doesn’t call to mind any one obvious band a la Deathcharge’s early material (I’ve heard bands like Killing Joke, Amebix, Southern Death Cult, Antisect, etc. bandied about in regard to this record; I’m not sure if any of those are exactly apt). I can tell you, however, that this song is all about suffocating repetition: the guitar parts, vocals, and drums all repeat over a riff just slow enough to sound demented and menacing but just fast enough to still induce headbanging. I don’t know anything about the dudes in Deathcharge, but I am glad that they decided to ditch the D-beat and write this song. Oh, and the B-side “New Dark Age” is pretty cool too…

***

Too often, we buy records based on “sounds like” – if we like Gloom, we buy umpteenth generation Japanese crasher crust records. If we like Leatherface we buy Florida melodic punk records. If we like early Agnostic Front we buy whatever Counterfeit Garbage tells us to (that is, if we’re smart Agnostic Front fans…otherwise, who the fuck knows). But “sounds like” doesn’t always (or even often) tell us if a band is good or bad, or if their records are worth listening to. As punk record reviewers, we have to throw “sounds like” out of our review vocabulary. As punk record buyers, we have to give up on the urge to form our taste through “sounds like” (or even worse, “looks like”). The moral of this story is that we have to keep our ears perked for interesting or remarkable sounds, rather than just carbon copies of our already standardized tastes. Otherwise, where’s the fun?

In the previous installment of “We Got Ways”—your favorite online column revisiting the great DIY punk/HC records (both heralded and unheralded) from the decade known as the aughts—we discussed the YOUNG WASTENERS 12” that gives its name to this column. Today’s featured band represents a departure from the cute, immediately likeable, hyped-to-death Wasteners—Utica, NY’s NO FUCKER.

No Fucker’s career (now over?) has been strange. Their story begins with the two main cretins behind the band cutting their teeth in a more-or-less terrible crusty HC band called DEATHBAG, which existed just before NF’s emergence. Living in NYC in the early 2000s, I saw these upstate NY freaks on a number of occasions and didn’t think much of them either way. They were a typical opening band at some typical crusty HC shows. That is to say, both live and on record, Deathbag was nothing to lose sleep over. One day, I heard that the two Deathbag dudes had dissolved their band—rumor had it that they too had realized that they were nothing special—and started what was billed to me as a DISCHARGE worship band that would never release vinyl records. They dubbed their new band No Fucker — a brilliant and hilarious (albeit obscure) Dis- inspired band name if I ever heard one — and promptly released a pair of righteously raw demo cassette tapes. My interest was naturally piqued. After that, the no vinyl records rule apparently fell by the wayside, as two split EPs with Japanese idols DISCLOSE materialized in 2004, to go along with a few dates on that band’s brief West Coast U.S. tour. Growing ever fonder of their vicious output and live explosiveness, I assumed at the time that this association with Disclose was destined to get folks outside of New York State to start paying attention to what seemed at the time like a well-kept East Coast secret. After all, this era was one of the many heights of the Japanese noizecore craze in the U.S. punk scene, with bands like FRAMTID, FEROCIOUS X, and DEFECTOR (along with countless less worthy others) releasing records of varying quality that instantly sold out or were apparently distro’d only by eBay. Despite seemingly being in the right place at the right time, and being better than many of the more hyped bands, No Fucker didn’t gain the plaudits of their Japanese (to say nothing of PDX, Austin, or SF) brethren. After a few hurrahs on the Disclose tour, they slinked back to Utica, and slowly but surely released two EPs that didn’t seem to get too much credit or attention among any but the most obsessive. Their first EP (To Whom Tomorrow Belongs) got eviscerated in a snarkily dismissive MRR review—one of my great regrets is not double-reviewing this gem at the time—and their second EP (Conquer the Innocent) seemed to get passed by altogether by most tastemakers. By that point—five or six years after No Fucker had made their debut—time seemed to have passed them by. Of course, doomsday d-beaters knew their name, but too many seemed not to flip over their splits with Disclose often enough (too bad for them—the song “Anti-War” on the Overthrow split is a real mix-tape worthy stomper), and NF never seemed to get enough attention from the fashion-crazed myspace crust world or scenester festival circuit to even gain much T-shirt love. In fact, outside of a few diehards in Japan and New York, I can’t say I ever heard anyone give this band the attention it really deserves.

No Fucker (photo by Al Quint)

What’s up with that? I mean, it’s not as though this band was going against the trends. If anything, they began No Fucker just in time to start playing what quickly became the HC sound of their era—DISCHARGE influenced hardcore with layers of fucked up noize lifted straight from CONFUSE’s handbook. They were friends with popular Japanese bands. They even got some random (if unexpected, at least to me) accolades from noise-hipster types. They put out cool looking records with great songs. When I saw them in 2003 at ABC No Rio with DSB, they played one of the most exciting sets imaginable, getting so crazily into it that they managed to play their then best song (the aforementioned “Anti-War”) twice. When I saw them at a show with Sex Vid in NYC in 2007, they blew the Vid—who were no slouches themselves that night—off the stage with their outrageous barrage of feedback. Most importantly, from the early Deathbag days to the last No Fucker days this band just kept getting better and better. I could imagine them pulling a Black Flag and practicing for 10 hours a day in their small town in an attempt to perfect their noise-laden art. Even when I was listening to their first demo in 2002 thinking, “Hey, this is pretty cool!” I never imagined that I would walk out of that 2007 show thinking, “Holy shit, I just saw the best fucking band in America…”

Ultimately though, it seems that No Fucker was not a band that would easily get popular with the cool kids. After all, the backbone of the band was two strange and ugly dudes—one old, lizard-skinned ex-con (who eventually lost a finger and had to stop playing guitar and settle for just being NF’s vocalist) and one young, nerdy freak with his oversized T-shirts tucked in—two friends obsessed with obnoxious, crazy music in what might be the shittiest, poorest city in all of New York State. The other members of the band seemed not to matter much either; hilariously, No Fucker featured a series of indistinguishable bass players referred to both individually and collectively as “Fangboner.” And though they befriended similar noise heads like Kawakami from Disclose and Stuart from Game of the Arseholes, they did not seem interested in being schmoozy; on the contrary, they were kind of abrasive and even antisocial. Though I met and chatted with them a number of times throughout the years, I could never tell if they liked me, hated me, or even remembered who I was. They didn’t fuckin’ care about that shit—they made noize not music, and that was that. They released their records themselves (on a label they called No Real Music) to middling distribution, they didn’t seem to tour much if ever, and though they not-entirely-successfully attempted to get a DIY space up and running in Utica, they ultimately chose to live in that fucked up old industrial wasteland full of meth heads, junkies, and people whom time had passed by rather than moving to any available (and more fashionable) punk mecca.

Now about their two self-released EPs, which were meant to be the subject of this essay, and without which none of my bloviating would matter…

2006’s To Whom Tomorrow Belongs is the earlier of the two, and it betrays the simple musical key to their formula, which they would really perfect on 2008’s Conquer the Innocent. What is that key, you ask? Well, this band steals a lot of guitar parts and swagger from ANTI-CIMEX. Really, this writer’s ears hear a lot more Cimex in NF’s sound/songs than either Discharge or Disclose. And while this distinction is admittedly minute if not downright farcical—it’s not one that my mom would pick out, that’s for sure—the patented Cimex guitars-as-if-recorded-in-a-wind-tunnel sound gives No Fucker a sort of out-of-an-‘80s-Swedish-time-machine quality that their Japanese peers (with their 48 tracks of guitar distortion) lack. Like Disclose, however, No Fucker uses their vocals as more of a rhythmic instrument than a melodic one, sometimes punctuating their guitar riffs with even greater effect than Kawakami, the Japanese master himself. No Fucker’s lyrics are minimal, but they are perfectly timed and placed. The guitar leads are at once idiotic and sublime. Happily, No Fucker lacks any “heavy”/“crust” pretentions, maybe even more so than Disclose (because they avoid the palm-muted metallic-tinge of that Japanese band’s “Dis-Bones” era), but nonetheless No Fucker is not really a party/fun band. Instead, they represent the most punk ideal: a band outside of the spotlight that spends every minute of free time trying to make and perfect their hardcore art. In this sense, No Fucker was an art band in the strict meaning of that term, at least in the sense that they created substance out of their very specific style. And for a few brief songs on two all too brief EPs, No Fucker put themselves on par with the best of the 30-year pantheon of cult bands that have been totally and utterly devoted to excruciating guitar screeching, d-beat flailing, and lots of shoutin’ and screamin’.

To what extent do you get involved and to what extent do just let shit go? My mind instantly flashes to about a million scenarios: Rodney King, Oscar Grant, the Richmond gang rape case, etc. (There’s about a million and one I’m not naming.) Here were situations where to a certain extent it was about crowd participation. With Rodney and Oscar it was both political and definitive to whoever decided to press “record” on the video camera and show the world what cops can get away with, and in the Richmond case it was a nightmarish realization that we live in a world where people can be cavalier in the face of the unthinkable. There is this mode of human thinking where people always want to hang back in a crowd — like the craziest shit can be happening, but the mode of thinking always seems to be, “This isn’t my problem. If no one else is reacting I’m not gonna react.” This is how horrible shit happens, seriously. But there is something to be said for maybe making more “passive” actions to protest someone being fucked with — like maybe calling the cops from your cell phone. It’s all very case-by-case but I’m always wondering if that could be enough. Obviously, and unfortunately, sometimes it has to be.

Long story short, my step-father was a pretty violent man. Really violent. There’s no need to go into all of it. As a child growing up in this situation I saw things go on in my house that made me feel like I was cursed by God, and was being fucked with specifically, but the second I ran away from home and talked to other punks I began to see the common thread of our existence. You grow up in some shitty Mid-American hell hole. your dad is violent but he makes waaay more money than your mom, so all his bullshit gets to hang out. (Thanks, Patriarchy!) You grow up feeling inferior, fucked with, and with a chip on your shoulder, and the more you take in about the reality around you the chip gets bigger and bigger. One day I learned that I needn’t cry over this (or cry more?) ’cause I can think of about 100 different people where this skeletal framework was happening in their homes too — shaping us. I remember growing up wanting access to guns and money (i.e., “safety”) even though guns kinda scared me and money was (and is still) very elusive. The thing about punks/freaks in general is that we were the first to realize that things were terribly wrong. We had all, through very hard means, got the “cosmic clue” the world was handing us (i.e., shit is fuuuuuuuuked up, girl — better pick a battle stategy now!). Or, rather, some of us did. It’s still funny how, even in the punk bubble, how many “well-adjusted” people walk among us. I can’t begin to explain how many ex-friends, -bandmates, -roomates, etc., who, even after they’ve known me for most of my life and my continuing struggle, still had the gall to ask, “Why are you so angry?” …But I digress…

I remember my family was sitting at Wendy’s eating when a fight erupted between my mom and step-dad. Something that started stupid (as always) and was going to end violently (as usual). I was holding my little sister waiting for something horrible to happen (I always had this inner anxiety that they would kill each other) when, for one of the only times I can remember, help came. There was this big white body-builder lady eating with her daughter at a table behind us. They continued to fight outside and the woman intervened. She pulled out a cell phone, (which I remember thinking was weird — it was about a good twelve years before the cell “boom”) and offered to stay with us till the cops came. I remember being in such a weird headspace. My step-dad had gotten away with so much for so long that I don’t think it ever really occurred to me that me and mom and sister were worth protecting. Sad. I do feel inclined to comment again on race and class here. My aunts and uncles stayed away from my parents’ violent relationship. It was so frequent I don’t really blame them, but also we lived in “the Fields” (where cotton was grown) and the relationship to the cops was dismal. Every dispute where they got called, they would come ask some questions, do nothing, and the cycle would continue. Now, my step-dad was pretty bold. If any of my aunts called the cops on him he would’ve fucked with them too, but there was NO WAY he was gonna fuck with a white lady. In Alabama?!?!?!?!?!!? Oh please… and she was a body builder?!?!?!!? (which is funny ’cause he was on the short side). Even with the sheer tragedy of this story, I cant help but laugh my ass off at these factors. I remembered it ’cause it was on of the few times I can recall a stranger coming to the rescue.

It was a couple of weeks ago and I was on BART when this huge guy started fucking with his female companion. It was not something you could ignore ’cause he was yelling. I remember it was me and this hippie boy who kept looking at each other like, “Should we check this fool?” Everyone else was ignoring it. He grabbed her hard and I saw the hippie boy jump up — I’ve hated on hippies in the past but I was glad to see that motherfucker. I jumped up with him. Now I am not a tough person. I have intense anxiety in physical situations, I stop short and have been too scared to fight back more times than I like to admit, but I knew despite all that that this was the one day in my life I wasn’t having that shit. The hippie boy (who was actually kind of cute, now that I think about it) sat to seat adjacently and I just asked the guy, “Why are you yelling at this woman? Is everything okay?” That pissed him off plenty and he started yelling at me (whiskey shot in hand — he seemed blacked out). He was about 50 lbs more muscle than me, and taller, and I kept saying this prayer over in my head: “He may hit me once but I’ll fuck him up with my bike lock (3x).” Before thought could turn to action, we pulled up to 12th St and a cop walked on the car and up to us and I remember it being one of the few precious times I was actually happy to see a cop.

If all goes according to plan, each of these columns will focus on one great record. Some will be relatively well known, while others will be hella obscure. This first post is likely of the former variety for those of you who’ve been at it for a while— though it might be new to a few young ‘uns—and as such it’s the perfect record with which to begin. Let me get to it—this installment is about this column’s namesake, the near-perfect 2002 12” by Denmark’s YOUNG WASTENERS, We Got Ways (Kick N’ Punch Records). Why? Because even nine (!!) years later, WGW is a stone classic of pure punk music. And what better way to get this column started than to revisit the favorite scene—Copenhagen, Denmark—of much of the 2000s? About that…well, I’ll let you in on a little-known secret: not all of the Copenhagen bands are as good as we said they were at the time. Two of them are – GORILLA ANGREB and the YOUNG WASTENERS. OK, OK, and HUL too, for the most part. But this column is not about those other bands. As for the relative overrated-ness of AMDI PETERSON’S ARME and NO HOPE FOR THE KIDS (there, I said it)… well, that is a conversation best left for another day (or alternately, for the comments section – have at it, kids!).

What is it about the Wasteners? For one thing, despite the many reasonable comparisons to the DEAD KENNEDYS they garnered at the time, their sound doesn’t evoke any one old band too closely. And despite being on the cusp between punk and hardcore, and sounding fairly U.S.-influenced, the Wasteners are not at all snotty in a DESCENDENTS/ANGRY SAMOANS way. Much more than any of those bands’ classic records, the Wasteners 12” rocks – just listen again to the title track and you’ll see what I mean. Also, unlike the DKs—who obviously wrote some classically great songs in their heyday—We Got Ways is never, ever annoying or too-much-of-a-good-thing. What I mean by that is, despite the obvious influence of the DKs, the Wasteners’ singer is (thankfully) never going for a straight-up rip off of Jello’s warble.

Young Wasteners (2002 — photo by Flexmyhead)

Despite all of the above disclaimers, We Got Ways is undeniably retro, in a way that became quite popular in the early/middle part of the aughts. Unlike some bands—i.e. REGULATIONS, TRISTESS, THE VICIOUS—who mined the same era of history but whose expiration dates were approximately one day after their records were released, the Wasteners have actually come to sound more timeless rather than more dated with the passage of the years. This is because they wrote significantly more interesting songs than many of their peers. To my mind, their greatness lies in their little guitar hooks (and on one song, a classic saxophone part!) and countermelodies, which wrap their way around virtually every song on this 12”. I think these guitar lines are probably part of the reason that the Wasteners get compared to the DKs in virtually every review, but this is misleading because these little guitar lines are rarely surfy or even noodly. In any case, they give the listener more than one melody on which to focus during every song, while the singer (melodically) screams his head off about such classic punk topics as cops, the boredom of the suburbs, and uh, Ecuador.

This record went in and out of print quite quickly in its day, but it received reissue treatment a couple of years back. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the reissue around for too long either. Search around the internet a bit, and I’m sure you’ll find it in digital form at the very least, if not on wax. Best tracks: “We Got Ways,” “Suburban Noize,” “Stained Circle.”

First of all, Magnolia Shorty, a local female bounce rapper got shot and died. Then, this guy named Jon Flee that my friends knew got shot while he was alone in his own home. Then there was a terrible fire that killed eight squatters and two dogs, the worst fire in this city in the last 25 years. Then I come home from tour to find a gun sitting out in my house, very nonchalantly, in plain view. I find out later it was loaded. Then a couple of days later our house got robbed. Nothing important or sentimental got ripped off but it made us all feel very vulnerable.

Violence and tragedy are all around and we’re all trying to ride the wave here in New Orleans. People who’ve lived here for a long time keep telling me that it always comes in waves, so I’m taking lots of deep breaths to combat the anxiety and waiting as patiently as I can for it all to be over.

It’s like the story of Adam & Eve — how Eve eats a fruit from the tree of knowledge and then they both realize they are naked even though they were naked all along. We are always vulnerable to violence, tragedy and death. We walk around naked and vulnerable every single day of our lives just waiting to die. But it’s times like this, when everything seems to be going wrong, that you begin to actually feel vulnerable and uncovered. In my rational mind, I know that anything could happen to me at any time, but at times like this, I feel it.

So, about the gun thing. I’ve never lived in a house with a gun in it before. Plus, the thing was just right out in plain view with no lock or anything, which was probably the worst way to find out that you’re living with a gun. As soon as I saw it, my whole house felt different to me and it didn’t feel safer, it felt scarier. We’re having a house meeting tomorrow to figure things out.

Things are already starting to stabilize, though. A week ago two friends of mine who I also play music with were thinking about moving away. The tragedies were still fresh in the air and people’s minds and emotions were reeling. But now, they think they’ll stay. Once the anxieties die down, you have to ask yourself, “Where am I really gonna go that’s safe?” Nowhere is safe.

I rode my bike alone from Mid-City to the Bywater by myself last night, pedaling out my anxieties and at the same time feeling this huge rush of gratitude for every time I’ve done anything even slightly risky like biking in New Orleans alone at night and gotten away with it.

Things I do to help cope when it’s like this:

1. Hang out with people more
2. Meditate — deep breaths help keep ya grounded
3. Get trashed — deep breathing only gets me so far
4. Obsess over music
5. Eat a lot of food
6. Watch Jem & the Holograms
7. Leave town
8. Read books, especially comic books
9. Talk on the phone to a friend in a different state
10. Ride my bike

Besides, what do New Orleanians do to balance the tragedy? We throw a big parties! Stay tuned for details on the No More Fiction fest in New Orleans, late spring or summer 2011. If you’re a queer punk misfit in the South, don’t move to the Bay Area or Brooklyn just yet. If you’re one of the only brown kids in your entire scene, I know it can get weird, but hold tight for a second. I know you’re lonely and there’s no one to date, but let’s just see what we can make happen down here…

shotgunseamstressa {at} gmail(.)com

Money is a necessary evil. Capitalism and consumerism are things that seem barely possible to avoid; the best most of us can do is try to step back and disengage as much as possible, questioning why we want this or that or the other thing. Do we need it? Who are we supporting when we buy it?

I feel like these days there is a faction of punk that has given up the fight against “the man” and instead has totally invited him in. It seems to have sprung from somewhere between a place of irony and a place of believing that you are somehow duping corporate America. Believing that fat wad of cash you received for turning one of your songs into a commercial jingle is somehow you pulling a fast one on said corporation. What is an absurdly huge amount to us is chicken scratch to corporate America. They just paid you pennies for a whole lot of street cred. It’s these kids who believe that they are changing the shitsystem by “infiltrating” it. If you are working within the shitsystem, you are working with the shitsystem. I was talking to a friend who was saying that he was going to try to use his new found LA connections to get his friends a sitcom on cable television; his reasoning was then at least someone cool was making that money that is just waiting to be made. Yeah, I get it. But are we really changing the shitsystem by existing in it, or is existing in it merely giving into it?

Accepting corporate sponsorship seems to have become totally acceptable too. Do you think you are somehow tricking some corporation because you got those pants for free? By you wearing those fucking jeans, Mr. Corporate is basically out zilch and they just earned a whole lot of street cred from you. You have become a walking ad campaign. On top of that there are only certain punks that have access to that free stuff. Not everyone is going to get a new free pair of shoes; only people who have the right connections are going to get that free pair of shoes. It’s not dumpster diving. It’s not a free for all.

Instead of basking in the romanticism of starving artists we’ve begun to dive into the waters of vapid privilege. Whenever I hear punks say they think so-and-so band should be topping charts because they’re so great, it makes me cringe. Things that I like and things that are popular are completely separate. The mechanics that make things popular and keep things popular are incredibly ideologically questionable. Do you really like it, or do you just think you like it because you’ve been told so many times that you do? No matter how much you think you’re fucking with corporate America, they are still the ones in power. At the end of the day the difference in paycheck you get for giving that corporation street cred compared to what the dude at the top is making is mind-boggling. Why are you trusting a corporation in the first place? Haven’t you seen Wayne’s World? No matter what deal they give you they’ve still got fucked labor practices. They’re still paying the kid at the bottom below a living wage. There is still and always will be an abuse of power.

And even if you do get that chunk of change for “selling out” or whatever, where does that leave you? What it sets up is a lifestyle of living off of your music—a lifestyle that you then have to maintain, or find yourself wanting to maintain, somehow. So how to maintain it? This is the line where your music ceases to be made for pure catharsis or pure passion or for the community or for the kids or whatever—it’s being made ultimately for a paycheck. Yeah, you might tell yourself/say it’s with the best intentions and that you are in no way compromising, but ultimately you are trying to pay rent. You need that money to pay rent. You then have to produce a product that is at least more likely to make that money. Right?

How does this really benefit you? Once something works, some song you wrote gives you a little dough—is it fun/interesting/worthwhile to repeat yourself? Is this what you wanted to do? Why did you start the band in the first place? To make money or to get that out of you?

But more importantly, how does this benefit the community? How does you paying your rent benefit everyone? Instead of trying to make the next album-of-the-year rating from Pitchfork or hustling/promoting your shit all day in order to stay in the limelight, in order to boost your sales or whatever, why not put that energy towards demanding universal health care? Or volunteering at rock camp? Or making music that is challenging and dangerous? Something, whatever it is, that helps everyone around you? When it comes down to it, living off your art is giving into capitalism, giving into consumerism. You may be getting your message out to kids, but really, in the end, you’re just producing a product to buy. I realize we exist in a capitalist society and it does cost money to be in a band, I’m not saying it’s possible or even logical to never accept money for being in a band—but when it becomes the main way to pay your personal bills you’ve put yourself in a weird space above your peers, you’ve alienated yourself from the community.

I read this book (Unmarketable by Anne Elizabeth Moore) that talked to artists who ended up doing art for corporate ad campaigns; their reasoning tended to be a lot of “I did it to be able to afford to move to New York” and “this allowed me to quit my day job and spend more time in the studio” and the like. This is selfish. This is aiding in the corporate appropriation of outside art—not to benefit the community at large, but in order to benefit only you. No one else. This is not punk.

So where along the line does “selling out” occur?

I believe in ending up in a situation where all the sudden your band is making enough money to fully live off of—sometimes these things do just happen—but then what? It’s a slippery slope. Guaranteed that lifestyle of living off your music “without compromising it” won’t last unless you make it last—meaning, altering what you do, even if it’s ever so slightly, in order to continue how you are existing; turning it into a situation where “not compromising yourself” ceases to be not altering what your music is but becomes about not altering your living situation; the fact that you don’t need a job and you can devote all your time to music.

But also, even the moment you start seeing music as a career option some part of you begins to steer it in that direction. Consciously or subconsciously there is an effort to make things commercially viable. There is a drive to be part of the shitsystem rather than dismantling it.

These things, especially free stuff from corporations, are extremely vague. There isn’t really a clear line of what is or isn’t selling out, when it’s OK to give in to corporate America and when it’s not, what’s OK and what’s not. I was in a band that scammed a sponsorship from Sparks. We would throw “warehouse parties” (punk shows in my basement) and Sparks would give us entire flats of the stuff. We would charge at the door with the promise of free unlimited booze and then give all the money we made to the bands. We were paying bands $100-plus for basement shows in Olympia. Unheard of. Did I feel like we were scamming Sparks? Yeah. And I fully realized that people would probably be buying it at the corner store and drinking it anyways. Did I still find it kind of questionable? Yeah. So it benefited the community but still felt kind of bullshitty. I still felt like I was supporting Sparks’ corporate agenda in some way. I mean, I was, honestly.

Is it important that what we do is secret? Does that still apply? Is it truly important to “not sell out” or is it just a romanticized lifestyle at this point? Should we look at punks getting paid as “well at least someone cool is getting paid?” Is it that the current shitsystem is so entirely unavoidable and we might as well participate?

Seven for Five

Tonight the bands are seven for five bucks, mostly unremarkable, but the kids have great plumage as they sway and flirt in the courtyard out back. One of them takes a long pull off a PBR and says to her friend, “That looks like the guy who stuck his hand in the blender at my house last night.” Inside a longhair stands taking off his clothes in the corner. A tall person dancing by the stage smiles like a young John Doe, lighting up one whole side of the room. I sit for a while by myself sort of not knowing what to do with my hands, which feels the same as it always has, except that now I’m not so self-conscious about being self-conscious. Instead I spend a few minutes enjoying the awkwardness. This is the feeling people drink to suppress, but they shouldn’t bother. After all, who cares? Nobody cares. And even if they did, who cares?

I drink anyway. I’m talking to a woman with impossibly (not too strong a word) thick black braids and a complexion that may one day, if she doesn’t take precautions, be considered “ruddy” but is now a smooth toasted rose. She’s just come down from hiking the Pacific Coast Trail. I ask if she gets stuck talking to annoying creeps when she’s walking alone. She says yes, that does happen, but it’s not so bad in the context of the loneliness of the trail. I ask what goes on in your head, hour after hour of walking in silence. She says you think about music and sex a lot. She says it takes about a week for the noise and slogans and pop-culture detritus to slough away, but she doesn’t tell me what replaces it.

Rayos X (photo by Paul Curran)

As we talk I’m thinking about getting older in the scene. The things that change. How it starts to seem like a good idea to frame things instead of just taping them to the wall. How you have less time for anything that feels like you’ve heard it before. How clichés taste like turds in your mouth. How taking things slow seems nice, even exciting. How you no longer pretend you can get away with not flossing. How instead of worrying about what you’re going to do with your life, you worry about whether you’ll have to do it alone. Unless, that is, you’ve already set up house.

After seven bands’ worth of no ins-and-outs the floor is a slick rink of sweat and beer that a few wasted kids are skating across arm-in-arm. Everyone is clearing away from the edges of the pit, so they get farther and farther out, and I feel bad that no one will create that flexible human rope to enclose the space. It occurs to me that the pit is just a manifestation of the desire for boundaries from an indulgent community. We want there to be some guidelines to go apeshit inside. The kids are flinging themselves out into space to see who will push them back into the sweaty mess. Spinning so fast or charging so hard they fall, just to be reassured someone will pick them up. It’s sometimes more entertaining than the band, but not when the band is Rayos X, from Los Angeles.

Email me. Mail to PO Box 170291, SF, CA 94110.

Virtually Invisible

Last week the New York Times Magazine published photographs by Pieter Hugo of foragers in Agbogbloshie, a slum in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Here human beings hunt for sellable computer components in a smoking wasteland of toxic waste and ash. The computers they’re picking through were sent as parts of foreign aid packages, but end up being more useful to people as raw materials: they can sell the precious metals inside. I looked at the face of a fourteen-year-old human being crouching on a ruined apocalyptic surface and thought about the many hours I spend in front of my laptop working through some idea about the world. Sometimes what I’m imagining, sitting there, is some version of the apocalypse, but not this.

When I’m living my punk-capitalist life, eating and drinking and buying shoes and reading magazines, I try to take account of the real value of what I’m consuming — a value that takes account of the real labor, danger, and terror that went into making and delivering a product, as well as the pulse of my desire for it. I don’t try as hard as I should, or as hard as I used to, but I try. When I sit to write about it on my computer, on the other hand, I enter an abstract state, as if I were communicating directly to the air, not using a tool at all. The packaging of our devices, increasingly lightweight and abstract, further exaggerates this feeling that the computer (phone, etc.) is not a physical object in the same way as other objects, but somehow an extension of our own thoughts.

But on the other side of the near-magic of these intimate machines is the expression in the eyes of the fourteen-year-old on the dead land of Agbogbloshie. Technology makes waste, and the waste ends up in the laps of the poor. Same as it ever was.

•••

People are drinking Coke in San Francisco. Yelling in the streets, staggering shirtless. The fog’s burned off, which means a difference of thirty degrees. It’s not like there’s no summer here, regularly, but it’s suppressed — it’s like somebody muffled it with a wet rag. When they lift the rag it roars back and everyone wants to immediately get busy. Half the neighborhood is assembling ships on wheels and cars with sails in preparation for a big wild party in a distant desert that has a real effect on life and money in San Francisco. The rest of us are enjoying the precious warm nights smelling like clover, like trash and suntan lotion, like motorcycles, like smoke and jasmine in the future, jasmine to come.

Summer tours came through. At the house show the tenants piled all the furniture in the kitchen and ripped the doors off of parts of the house and hammered them onto other parts of the house. The arrangement reminded me of somewhere I had lived as a kid, somewhere in Hayward. Trash kept handing me caffeinated beer. Fugitive Kind put their best guts into their last song. Opt Out’s Dan Zia did many spastic half-flips and played a shocking tug-of-war with some kid’s cane. Then everyone was dancing to Chicago’s Daylight Robbery, dripping with sweat. I’d seen them a while back in New York and thought they were X-like, which now struck me as clearly not quite right. Nuclear Family from Albany rocked it, and charmed us with a cover of “Class War.” I wondered if they had a local cover for each town — nice trick. Somehow nobody was bleeding. Around the corner from the show light poured from a storefront, where boxes were piled high with free food. It was like a socialist dream state: the destruction of walls, the redistribution of bread. Everybody was eating handfuls of marionberry pie and bedsheets of lavash.

It was summer for four days. On the last of them I went to Grass Widow choir practice in a twenty-year-old warehouse space with five levels of lofts connected by spidery stairs and firemen’s poles to slide down to the ground. Someone rolled up the delivery doors for the heat and we saw the sunset and across the street the freight trains hauling aggregate to Nevada. We were standing in three groups of six or seven women and a few little girls. I started in bronze but ended up in gold, the middle group, with Ivy and Priya. The band was already doing three-part harmony. It started getting dark, and hobos gathered outside the doors to watch. During the part where the gold group sang “aaahhhh,” the train whistle went off. The strings arrived.

Write me. PO Box 170291, San Francisco, CA 94110.

Adventures in Nonfiction

Mimi was in town. It had been three years. We went out for Indian food and then coffee. Her dashing girlfriend Fiona was there too, in a vintage vest and tie. I had forgotten that Mimi was left-handed and that she didn’t drink coffee. She still had asymmetrical hair but now she grew herbs, she said, with a shrug, and did bodywork to take care of her fucked-up shoulders. She and Fiona were working on their respective books. Mimi said she was tired of hers, she wanted to write a different book, a series of essays about NGO-sponsored beauty pageants in which landmine victims were awarded solid-gold prostheses, and the for-profit marketing of women’s-prison-made handicrafts to consumers, and other confusing and/or obscene intersections of fashion and oppression. I told her I wished she would hurry up and finish the first book so she could hurry up and write the second.

We talked about how to get these things done when there’s no one around to tell you to do them. No TV, no video games, we agreed. At one point Mimi said that if she were rich she would probably just stay home and play World of Warcraft. We talked about teaching: Fiona presents key points of feminist thought to her students by showing them slides of cute boys. Seeing Zach Braff or whoever floating on-screen beside important tenets of post-colonial theory made them feel less anxious about taking Women’s Studies classes, she said, especially from someone who looked so queer. We talked about binge drinking, grade inflation, and the Midwestern post-adolescent’s lack of affect.

I told Mimi and Fiona how lately I’ve been tiptoeing into a local grassroots literary circle, a place I might someday like to belong. It’s mutually supportive and DIY and otherwise similar to the punk scene in many ways, but I still feel like a kid at my first show, or writing overconsidered letters to zine editors, all awkward and fumbling around with my wings folded behind me and dragging a little on the floor in front of the stage. It’s a strange place to find myself, after having stuck around long enough in punk publishing to have my name scratched on the walls, and to be accepted by people like they accept the walls. We talked about writing zines and blogs and books. I laughed because I had left MRR to attend a top-tier journalism school and now here I was, back again. I said it felt right, I missed it, I needed a smaller feedback loop than the huge film and book projects provide. They take so long and can be so lonely. Mimi shrugged again and said she needed to keep writing too — why did I think she hung on at Punk Planet until Dan Sinker took her off the masthead without even an explanatory email? And that’s also why she does the wonderful threadbared fashion site that’s of course about so much more. I asked, but what is the compulsion to share about, anyway? Why so first-person all the time? Is it some kind of disease? One we share with everyone on Twitter? We’re not 25 years old anymore, clutching Xacto blades, but we haven’t changed. We still keep courting the dynamic terror of creative self-doubt.

Fiona and I finished our coffee. I bragged about touching the Rosetta Stone. Then we talked about what was hot in YA fiction. Mimi recommended a series called Monster Blood Tattoo.

Notes!

1. Check out San Francisco’s Doomed this week. Yes. All ages. Yes. Maximum plus Thrillhouse plus bands plus baseball. Yes.

2. Surrender is still on tour. Go see them when they come through. OK, they’re peace punk, but they’re also doing…theater. I don’t mean like high school thespians exchanging lines from “Les Miz” in the cafeteria. I mean that they don’t just play, they perform, and they don’t break character, allowing you to fall under their spell. The blindfold still bothers me, but in a good way.

3. I am interviewed by the rejectionist about my film on Ursula K. Le Guin.

Arwen Curry and Ursula K. Le Guin (photo by Andy Black)

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