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Noise Annoys

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You may be familiar with a derisive term said in film circles: homework movies. This phrase refers to influential achievements in cinema that one doesn’t necessarily enjoy but are requirements for students of film history. Your mileage may vary here; some consider Citizen Kane the most obvious example of a ‘homework movie,’ but I find it quite enjoyable.

We don’t need to debate how most of Jean-Luc Godard‘s films feel like homework. Since the mid-60s, his movies have increasingly pummeled audiences with literary references, philosophical quotations, and fiery polemics. Even the most seasoned fans and expert critics of the French New Wave openly admit Godard often vaults far above their heads. I’m no exception.

This begs the question: why keep watching something you aren’t sure you like, much less understand? Watching and admiring while shrugging for explanations opens us to accusations of pretension or bandwagoning. Somehow partaking in inscrutable films like Godard’s is taken as its own performance.

And that’s cool. To insist that everyone, or even anyone, should sit and watch Godard, especially his later films, is a ridiculous proposition. Besides the earlier touchstones, Godard’s movies are of a taste one can’t acquire. You either savor the exercise of watching his difficult cinema or you don’t. No harm, no foul. 

But it’s not like we claim these films are difficult for everyone but us. I mean, I don’t feel superior or enlightened watching Godard’s Film Socialisme. Quite the opposite! However, it does make my brain feel like a muddy automobile subjected to an intense car wash before driving back out into the mud. And the parts connected to my eyes and ears got extra squeegeed. 

As you may have guessed, Godard’s death and a Criterion Channel subscription inspired me to dive into the filmmaker’s infamous later work over the past few weeks. It’s been a trip. I wasn’t sure how to approach this ‘homework,’ but then I read Roger Ebert’s suggestion that the key to later Godard is to succumb to his world: 

One single Godard film seems accidental. But if you see half a dozen, you begin to get a sense of his universe. You see themes introduced, developed, worked out, discarded and then later satirized.

You can’t watch these alongside other movies (or compare them, god forbid) because he aims to rip cinema apart at the seams. I’ve been watching the later films in a row, and I feel like I’m ‘getting’ them by seeing them together, though that doesn’t mean I’m also not frustrated and exasperated. It’s all part of viewing Godard as he lets ‘er rip.

I also think it’s vital to understand all of his films are ‘meta’ — from Breathless on — in that they reflect what he’s wondering about at the time. They’re not autobiographical; they’re the act of someone trying to figure things out and not settling on a worldview. I don’t think Godard is sure about anything in his films, even the bold pronouncements. It’s telling that one can read multiple reviews and essays on, say, The Image Book, and they’ll each tell you the movie is about something completely different. These movies show Godard loudly wondering, trying on ideas to see how they fit, and letting the public continue the discourse. What a fascinating thing. Richard Hell elaborates: 

Godard is willing to do something in a movie just to see what happens if he tries it. He can be boring in the exercise of his full freedom, but you can’t have one without the other, and I want them like nothing else.

As problematic as Godard was, I came away from these last films seeing him as an inspirational figure. He persisted and remained uncompromised until his demise at 91. His work is so hated and hatable, mostly because he didn’t give a fuck right to the end. I mean, Godard inflicted Cannes juries with films so dense and furious and, yes, incomparable that they had no choice but to create a prize for him. 

I talk a lot about punk rock on this blog, mainly in the context of autonomy and a strict DIY ethos. Godard was all that, but he also spit out punk rock in its more identifiable ‘two fingers in the air’ flavor. I’m trying hard to think of any accepted figures of the punk world who walk the talk into senior citizen status. I guess some of the Crass folks are still communally living in the woods, but I’m hard-pressed to come up with any others off the top of my head.

I can’t say I love love love Godard (very few do). And he’s not one of my favorite filmmakers. But I’ve become inspired by my journey through his most iconoclastic work. Just as the punk rockers inspired others to pick up guitars and bash away, Godard’s 21st-century films, made up of barely connected visual and audio collages, have me thinking about making weird little movies. Godard shot footage on a camera phone in Goodbye To Language, so why can’t I? That these films provide an imaginative impulse is perhaps the greatest compliment I can give. 

Note: This post was inspired by and contains parts of a recent exchange on Mastodon.

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The spirit of Godard’s uncompromising nose-thumbing/rules are made to be broken/commercial appeal be damned attitude has thrived in the noisier, improvised edges of the DIY musical arts since the accessibility of home recording. And Drone Bone recalls the early excitement of a time when PortaStudios ignited the garages of suburban noisemakers. Their self-titled exercise pairs Adrian Orange (of Thanksgiving and Adrian Orange and Her Band) and Ashby Mary Collinson for a seat-of-the-pants session recorded in 2007, now reissued by Brooklyn’s Perpetual Doom outfit. Ashby Mary is knocking riffs on the Wurlitzer in a fashion that recalls Suicide‘s repetitions, and Adrian is credited with drums and guitar. This all sounds live and on the spot, but I’m assuming the guitar was overdubbed unless Adrian plays drums and guitar simultaneously (I’m not entirely discounting that possibility).

“Drone Bone was born out of sheer restlessness,” writes Ashby Mary. It sounds like it! Some songs begin with the duo’s conversations as they quickly decide how to begin before barreling right into the racket. The music (and some of you may doubt that designation) is ramshackle and rambling, but the point is the joy of creative collaboration without expectation or preconception. I’m not even sure there was a plan. But there’s a great sense of release in these tracks, and you might find it exhilarating, sort of like how I felt when I first heard Jandek records or Daniel Johnston cassettes in the ’80s. Those fractured vibrations inspired teenage me to rattle a suburban garage of my own, and hearing Drone Bone makes me hopeful that its listeners’ next-door neighbors will not be pleased.

Gardening Not Architecture

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There was an article about me yesterday in the Orlando Weekly. Written by long-time friend Daniel Fuller (who you may remember as danielfuzztone), the piece is a sort of ‘where is he now?’ explainer for the curious. Of course, I’m not hiding — I’m here on the blog and involved in many public-facing projects. But, locally, I’ve left the scene behind. Remember: I was a Q-Burns Abstract Message once, and for a decade or more, you could find me DJ’ing in Orlando at least a few times each month.

Daniel did a fantastic job summarizing what I’m up to. And the article is fascinating (at least to me) when paired with a prior Orlando Weekly profile from 1997, also written by Daniel. If only I knew then what I know now etc. etc.

There are a few things in the article I feel like elaborating on. I thought about calling this the ‘director’s commentary,’ but, in that comparison, I think Daniel would be the director. So these are my liner notes:

“I got into DJing initially because it seemed like an extension of what I was really into as a punk rock kid … I was really into the idea of the band being the facilitator for the show; they weren’t necessarily the stars.”

The main draw of punk rock for me in my teenage years wasn’t the music, though I liked a lot of that, too. Instead, it was the concept of fans and bands occupying a level playing field. One was as crucial to the scene, the show, and the ‘infrastructure’ as the other. As a result, punk rock felt like a co-op. (Here’s the point where, once again, I recommend Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life. This book describes the grassroots independent music scene that shaped all my opinions and feelings on how decentralized communities really work.)

As I grew up, punk rock did, too. Suddenly, many of these bands were preening on magazine covers and making major label compromises. They became the stars, and we became the fans in the crowd, a hierarchical separation. I lost interest.

Then, I discovered underground dance music around 1990. At that time, the independent dance/house/techno scene had a lot of the elements that brought me to punk rock: the dancefloor as equal (or maybe more critical) to the DJ, a self-distributed ethos, and an international network furthering the music through zines, small clubs, and independent distributors. Of course, there were always DJ ‘stars.’ But what interested me were the scenes that developed around specific labels, crews, and parties. The DJs or their names were inconsequential, which is partly why many early producers kept changing pseudonyms from release to release. It was also common for the DJ to be hidden, maybe behind a wall with a small opening. Or in the center of the dancefloor without a spotlight. Like the band in my quote above, the DJ was there to facilitate the goings-on.

But, yeah, that aspect of underground dance music dwindled as the boom years of the mid-90s hit. The trajectory followed that of punk rock, with more and more DJ cover stars and heightened commercial aspirations. The DJ booth became a place under spotlights, and by the mid-2000s, one couldn’t DJ without a line of people watching instead of dancing, like the DJ’s doing a guitar solo or something.

I recognize that I found myself on a few magazine covers and did the major label thing — I wasn’t immune to these aspirations. But by the late 2000s, I was over it. Underground dance music lacked most of the things that initially brought me into it. DJ stars got upgraded to superstars, festivals were ascendant, and that whole Boiler Room thing of ‘let’s watch the DJ’ became the norm.

I realize some pockets retained the original spirit, and some probably still do today. But I couldn’t connect with the place I found myself in — and I’m partly responsible for occupying that place — which made me uncomfortable. I wanted out, cold turkey. And then the keratoconus hit.

“It became a little tougher for me also because I had this eye disease called keratoconus that made it really difficult to see in dark rooms — so it became less and less fun for me for that reason as well,” Donaldson says.

You can learn more about keratoconus at this link. I knew I had a problem when I was playing a warehouse party in San Francisco under my ideal circumstance — no spotlights! — and I couldn’t see the record covers. I’m thumbing through my vinyl bag and have no idea what to play because I couldn’t distinguish one record from another. That sucked! A DJ named Joey Youngman was there and saw the trouble I was having. He happened to have a penlight and gave it to me, my knight in shining armor.

Not-so-fun fact: Scott Hardkiss had keratoconus, too. We used to commiserate over it whenever we talked. I miss that guy.

But after seeing Meat Beat Manifesto perform, he bought a sampler and began creating his own dance tracks …

I tell the whole story of how Meat Beat Manifesto led to my first sampler and how that encounter eventually resulted in a tour with them in this episode of the Scotch and GOOD Conversation podcast.

For the curious, search for “Animation Festival” on Bandcamp — a Butthole Surfers-esque group he was in during the late ’80s.

I would rather you didn’t search for that, but here’s the link as I know you will anyway. Please don’t start with the first song as it’s distorted all to hell.

Animation Festival wasn’t a band but a solo effort I recorded on an old four-track recorder. (My then and still close friend Les added some guitar to the last tune.) I was teaching myself music production and setting up challenges for myself. The goal of this project was to see if I could record a ‘continuous album’ on four tracks. In other words, to have the separate songs fade into each other. If you’ve ever tried recording an album on a four-track — especially in stereo — then you know this is tough! I was successful though not without mountains of tape hiss.

I sent this to a Memphis-based tape label called Harsh Reality Music. They put it out! And they sent one to Factsheet Five, and it somehow got a great review. “This is real music,” was the review’s last sentence, which baffles me to this day. But, technically, this is my first album, my first time working with a label, and my first review.

The notes on that Bandcamp page say I recorded the tape in 1990, but that’s wrong. I started recording this in 1987, going into ’88. Oh, and this is fun: I achieved the pitch effects on my voice by twiddling the tape speed on the four-track. That’s how we used to do.

In fact, one of his favorite countries to travel to was Russia, where he DJed more than a dozen times.

I really need to write more about Russia on this blog. I wrote about one experience here. 

I wouldn’t say it was one of my favorite places as I loved going anywhere, especially if I hadn’t been. But I started going to Russia in 1998 — a prominent club promoter was an early fan — and, yes, I ended up back there about 15 times.

I made many friends in Russia, and I’m still in touch with a few, though some have long since moved outside of the country for various reasons. I loved exploring Moscow and Russia and was fond of the people I met. But, yeah, the government and its leaders always creeped me out (which led to more than one heated conversation with a Russian friend). 

As I kept going back, things got weirder and weirder. My last visit was around 2010. During my visit, I was stopped and threatened with arrest for walking to a diner after midnight, and the club I played got raided by authorities touting machine guns. The possibility of either of those things would not have crossed my mind until my last few trips.

But so many beautiful things happened there, too. Once I was invited by the then-girlfriend of my friend Boris to join her family for Maslenitsa, the Russian day of forgiveness. That was quite an honor, and we ate the traditional pancake-like meal while the father quizzed me in Russian (his daughter translating) about my favorite science fiction movies. After dinner, the father invited me to the drawing room, where we partook in shots of vodka. Then, after plenty of drinks, the father called his daughter over to help translate something for me.

He got emotional. The father explained that during Soviet times he worked on Russia’s nuclear missile arsenal. “I helped with the missiles aimed at YOU!” he said. Then, getting more teary-eyed, he added, “If you had told me then I’d host an American in my house for Maslenitsa, I would have said you were crazy. It’s incredible to have you here. These are wonderful times.” And we toasted and did another shot.

Those were wonderful times. I don’t miss DJ’ing, but I wouldn’t mind returning to that feeling of reconciliation and friendship among those formally separated by state-ordained ideology. And I’m not just talking about people of different countries. But, like my last DJ set, it seems so long ago. 

Aliens That Look Like Automobiles

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In the late ’80s, I was heavily into zine culture. Isolated in Central Louisiana, I was an outcast kid into weird stuff, craving connections to an outside world of strangers. I can’t remember how I initially discovered zines and the related mail art community. I’m sure my love of DIY punk rock played a part.

Eventually, I obtained an issue of Factsheet Five. The mag inspired me to open a secret post office box, so all this unusual mail wouldn’t arrive at my parents’ house. After sending off several envelopes containing a few quarters, or postage compensation, or an enthusiastic letter, I was part of the zine scene. I was connecting and corresponding with like-minded weirdos across the world. Kind of like I still do today — but without sending out stamps.

Let’s get a couple of definitions out of the way. ‘Zine’ is short for ‘fanzine’ — a short-run, self-published, often obsessive, and sometimes free magazine made by (and for) a ‘fan’ of something. The first documented fanzine was created in the ’30s, probably by mimeograph. That original zine, like most zines in the mid-century, was focused on science fiction. Punk rock created another significant zine movement, and, in the ’90s, the format reached an apex with riot grrl zines.

But zines could be about anything. There were zines for collectors of you-name-it, anarchist zines, intimately personal scream-for-help zines, zines by moms about mom-life, conspiracy and UFO zines, comix zines, and on-and-on-and-on. One of the most unique and heartfelt zines I read at the time was Duplex Planet. Published by an employee of a nursing home, the zine featured interviews and updates with the residents as they arrived and (often sadly) departed. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it’s still around. Duplex Planet showed the possibility of zines and self-publishing as a vehicle for a personal voice.

If you think this sounds a lot like blogging and email newsletters, then I’d say you’re not off course. I recently subscribed to Rusty Blazenhoff’s Electric Dreams email newsletter, and right there in the header, it’s called “An Inbox Zine.” Wherever you go, there you are.

I’m thinking about zines because of Factsheet Five. Factsheet Five was like a search engine for zines but it was also a zine. Hundreds of single paragraph reviews of zines filled its pages. And the reader was also given the zines’ addresses and how to get them (such as “.50 or two stamps”). There were also music etc. reviews and editorials from various zine luminaries. But you got this for the zine listings. It was a joy to go through all these zine descriptions and highlight the ones that created the most curiosity. From my perch in Tioga, Louisiana, these were pre-internet windows to the wider, weirder world.

One could receive Factsheet Five a few different ways — by sending three dollar bills and a couple of quarters to the editor, or by mailing something to review (music, your zine), or by contributing something (writing, artwork). I did all three of those throughout college to get my issues.

And here’s why Factsheet Five and zines are on my mind. Early this week, I was on Archive.org and thought, “I wonder if any old issues of Factsheet Five are archived here?” I did a quick search and discovered just under a dozen issues. I picked one from 1988 — as that’s the time I was most active in my zine-collecting — and flipped through the virtual pages. Amazing! I recalled when, to me, all of this was new and dangerous. I glimpsed some familiar names, including a few ‘pen-pals’ who I met through zine-trading. And then, to my surprise, I ran across a name I certainly recognized:

Plague On Wheels reviewed in Factsheet Five

In 1988 I decided to publish my own zine. It was called Plague On Wheels. The name comes from the title of a fictitious book written by Kilgore Trout in Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. It’s about aliens that look like automobiles. And ‘Michael Behaviour’ was my punk rock name. A lot of us young miscreant-wanna-bes had punk rock names in the ’80s.

The review refers to Plague On Wheels as a ‘pfanzine,’ which is zine slang for a music-oriented zine. The ‘p’ stands for ‘punk,’ but a pfanzine can be about any genre of music. My zine had a lot of music in it, including interviews with a few random bands that answered my letters. I doubt I even heard these bands beforehand — I wrote them to get free music in exchange for some ‘press.’ Luckily, none of their music was awful.

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Plague On Wheels was handwritten, not typed. I didn’t have access to a photocopier (or the money to photocopy), so I had a pen-pal friend in Miami do it for me. I met this friend via Factsheet Five. He was a school teacher and could get free photocopies, but the quality was poor, and all the blacks faded in various tones of gray. Combined with the sometimes difficult to decipher handwriting, my distant friend and I agreed the flaws added a distinctive character.

My friend Flipper — also from Tioga — wrote the ‘How To Start a Radio Station’ piece. Now he has a book out through HarperCollins and regularly writes for established music magazines. I sent him this Factsheet Five review, and he told me that I was the first ‘publication’ to publish his writing.

Plague on Wheels. What a trip.

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I feel like there’s something I can say here about zines and blogs and newsletters. I should pull out my recurring theme of ‘the way we use new technologies can’t escape tradition.’ It does feel like I’ve been doing this a while. Running across a blog with an exciting point of view is similar to finding a cool zine on Factsheet Five. It just seems, with zines, the freak flag flies a little higher.

Zines are still around. And blogs and newsletters are resurgent. As long as singular voices are looking to connect — to find the others — we’ll have zines and blogs and all these things. And maybe our current state of isolation, this self-quarantining, has me thinking about how vital these voices are when we can’t seek each other out in person. Many of us need the weird little windows to the outside world, especially when those worlds seem cut off from us.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Foreign Dissent: International Punk Rock in a Digital Age

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Craig Mazer frequented Bad Mood Records, the rag-tag record store I owned 25-ish years ago. He was active and instrumental in Florida’s punk rock scene and published a slick-but-not-too-slick newsprint fanzine called IMPACT. Decades later, and here I am doing my thing in music-land, and Craig’s still championing the local punk rock scene. Give some credit to the lifers.

For six consecutive years, Craig’s promoted an Orlando event that might’ve been unimaginable without the internet. It’s called Foreign Dissent, and the idea is to showcase mostly undiscovered punk rock bands from all over the world to Orlando’s scenesters. It’s a diplomatic gesture from a group of fans that often get misconstrued as antagonistic and uncompromising. But punk rock is a welcoming tribe. It’s always fostered connections and curiosity among its global family. For example, my punk rock adolescence involved trading fanzines and cassettes across the ocean to addresses in exotic places like Croatia and Poland, usually copied from the classifieds in Maximum Rocknroll.

This year’s Foreign Dissent — held Monday, October 28 at the respected local venue Will’s Pub — features five countries across eight raucous bands. Denmark, Canada, Northern Ireland, Italy, and England are present, their representatives united by independence, rebellion, and a love for this music and lifestyle. Here’s the flyer:

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We know that punk rock is the most DIY of music genres, its historic DIY-ness an unspoken influence on today’s shift to self-release and toward self-reliance. But punk rock was doing this when the internet was basically two guys at a military base sending chess moves to each other. How has the scene adapted to an age where the idea of DIY promotion only conjures social media tactics? Are ‘the old ways’ of punk rock word-of-mouth, city-to-city networking, and flyer slinging still in the mix?

I’m curious, and Craig Mazer — whose promotion of Foreign Dissent happens under the punkily named Punching Babies — obliged my question. “I don’t see too many people handing out flyers. I think it has largely moved to social media as the main avenue for promoting. I do still see posters put up, and I’m sure that word of mouth is still important, but social media, to me, is the main avenue.”

He continues: “Social media is where so many people are. Between Facebook and Instagram, you have a huge audience right there. Now, the question of how effective it is is debatable, but it’s undoubtedly effective to some extent. Personally, I still love the DIY aspect, so I still put up posters and flyers at shows.”

It’s interesting because promoting punk rock was once different than promoting rock n’ roll or bands of other music genres. Just as the internet has lowered the barriers of musical preferences, it’s somewhat homogenized how we promote music. But how does social media — run by corporations of a size that would make Jello Biafra have a seizure back in the day — fit into punk rock?

Craig: “Man, that’s a tough one. I don’t know that it fits into punk rock as much as punk rock has had to give in to it. Social media is so pervasive. And it’s free (putting aside the idea of buying ads on social media), so it would be foolish not to have some amount of promotional presence on it for an event. It also allows for the ease of sharing and spreading the promotion, which can help a lot.”

But there is an upside that enhances punk rock’s tight, idealistic community. Craig adds: “I think that elements of the punk ethos have ‘weaponized’ social media by calling out abusers in the scene, exposing shitty booking practices or venues that are discriminatory.”

I remember local fanzines serving that purpose. People would even make one-off fanzines to expose certain undesirable elements in the scene. It seems that sort of scene networking has moved onto social media spaces.

Craig: “Yeah, definitely. That said, i don’t remember at any time in the ’90s that there was a means (or even much of a chorus of voices) for exposing that kind of stuff. There has been a huge wave of empowerment around it in the last 5-10 years.”

Canada's Bad Waitress are playing Foreign Dissent 6 in Orlando
Canada’s Bad Waitress are playing Foreign Dissent 6

I’m sure the internet makes one other thing a lot easier — organizing an international punk rock showcase. Says Craig, “It would have been very difficult 20 years ago. Even ten years ago, maybe. The internet is truly key, both for the organization of it upfront, but then also for the logistics and communications necessary as it gets closer to the day of show. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like for a foreign band to organize a tour back in the ’90s, like when I booked tours for [legendary Orlando punk band] Shyster and had to use a (gasp) phone.”

But some things haven’t changed despite the internet. Getting punk rock bands into the US is still a hassle. Probably even more of a hassle.

Craig: “When I did the first Foreign Dissent six years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. I hadn’t considered that these bands generally aren’t traveling with any gear. Getting into the US is hard enough, but if they come with all their gear, they’ll get tagged as coming here to work. And these small bands can’t afford work visas for a trip where they are probably going to lose money as it is. So I had to quickly scramble to find amps, a drum kit, and everything else. Some amazing friends in the music scene now loan their gear for the backline, or the bands borrow from other bands playing or buy something inside the US.”

But for Craig and many other promoters passionately exposing new acts, the hassle is worth it. “For many of these bands, it’s their first time in the US. And for some, Foreign Dissent is literally the first show they’ve ever played over here. That’s such a fulfilling feeling for me, to be able to give them that opportunity.”

He Provides the Soundtrack, We Make the Movie

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Be sure to check out this mini-documentary from Mixmag on the enigmatic Detroit producer Moodymann. I love his vision for his city, his ruminations on record shops, and how the staff at Archer Record Pressing warmly welcomes him. But mostly I love this, said to Gilles Peterson:

We went to the club to get down and dance. Everybody knew the DJ and we didn’t sit there and look at the DJ. He provided the music … we was more into the room. He provides the soundtrack, we make the movie. Well, nowadays everybody just stands there and looks at the DJ. It’s not like that’s Prince up there performing live. That’s the fucking DJ.

I got into DJ’ing via punk rock. That may seem like a non-obvious association, but hear me out. What I liked about underground punk rock was that the band wasn’t the star — the band was merely the facilitator, and everyone in the club was on an equal level. We were all part of the show, and together we made it memorable.

There was a similar feeling in underground dance music when I started DJ’ing. It was fine — even preferable — if the DJ was in the dark or behind a wall looking through a slit.1Many clubs in the early ’90s had ‘the slit.’ I admit that I hated this at first as it seemed like a (literal) wall between the DJ and the audience. But I’ve grown nostalgic for a time when the nature of the booth implied that the music was the true star of the show. We were there to come together, every person as necessary to this party as the next, rejoicing in the feeling of the music. That vibe, combined with the fiercely independent distribution and economy of underground dance music, was, to me, a new kind of punk rock.

I’m not shaking my fist at a cloud or feeling like things are worse or better than ‘back in my day.’ But it’s different. And I feel Moodymann’s frustration here. A couple of decades ago the role of DJs changed, elevated to stars as punk rock bands eventually were. And more and more it’s a DJ’s responsibility to be the movie. When that happens, who’s the soundtrack really for?

Related: On the Music Tectonics podcast The Verge’s Dani Deahl mentions, with trepidation, a new AI engine that selects, programs, and mixes music from a DJ’s predetermined selection. That way the DJ can focus on ‘performance’ rather than pesky details like queuing up and beat-matching songs. Canned performance is nothing new — the draw of many DJs and music artists is a cult-of-personality anyway — but the thought of such an app has me looking testily toward the sky.

Singles Going Steady

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I’m self-taught on guitar, and I learned by playing along to some of my favorite records. I started on one string, which strengthened my ear and warmed up my fingers. Over time I’d add another string, then another, and eventually I could pick out and play chords.

The records that I selected had to fit specific criteria. First of all, they couldn’t be too complicated: mostly open chords, not too riff-based. And I needed to love the songs — I’d be enthusiastic about learning if the songs were favorites. Also, it was a bonus if a whole album fit these specifications — then I could just put the album on and play along, like a concert. Circa 1985, when I was starting to learn guitar, two records perfectly fit the bill: The Feelies’ The Good Earth and Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady.

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The Buzzcocks got back together around 1990 and did a tour of the USA, which brought them to Jannus Landing in St. Petersburg. I made the drive over from Orlando to see them. The Buzzcocks were as good as I hoped they would be. Once the show ended and the club emptied, I stayed behind in a happy daze from finally seeing one of my favorite bands. That’s when I looked over to the bar and saw Steve Diggle, the lead guitarist, sitting down for a drink.

I walked over and introduced myself, and after his casual acknowledgment I decided to tell him, “I learned to play guitar to your songs.” Diggle’s reaction was like no one had ever told him this before. “Really? To my playing?” He then quickly ordered a pint for me and exclaimed, “You should meet the rest of the guys!”

So he took me backstage and introduced me to an incredibly friendly Pete Shelley. I stuck around, drinking their beer and chatting for about an hour. Somehow, they had no qualms about this excited fanboy hanging out in their dressing room while they were decompressing from the show. Everyone was so nice, and even Pete seemed interested in my compliments and questions. One of my best ‘meeting my heroes’ memories.

Pete Shelley died yesterday of an apparent heart attack. At 63 he was way too young. The Buzzcocks were still a going concern, with the reunion never quite ending. I see they were supposed to do a show in a couple of weeks.

Before you get to an age when your friends start dying, you experience your heroes dying. In a way, the loss probably feels about the same. You’re losing the ones you love.

Here’s the Buzzcocks song that’s rolling around my head today (not one that I would have expected):

Watch on YouTube

And this one, too, which was used as the end-credit song for the great documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (no correlation — Pete Shelley was very much loved while he was alive): 

Watch on YouTube

Update: A friend with a much better memory than mine and who was also at the show reminded me that it actually moved to the smaller Club Detroit because, if you can believe it, Buzzcocks didn’t sell enough tickets to adequately fill Jannus Landing. We also figured out the year was 1990. BTW – this friend saw Buzzocks in Manchester in 1979, opening band: Joy Division.

Decolonise: A Punk Fest Celebrating People Of Color

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The Quietus:

For those who have no experience of being a person of colour the fact that this event is even happening may come as a surprise. Why would anyone need a punk festival for people of colour in 2017? What does race have to do with the music you listen to? Why are you complaining, isn’t racism over? You might be reading this thinking the very same. Well despite your misgivings I can explain why WE ALL need a festival dedicated to the music of people of colour, today more than ever.



Looking back at the snotty, gob-throwing days of the late 70s punk scene in the UK you might at first think the stories of punks of colour ended with Poly Styrene, lead singer of the effervescent X-Ray Spex. Of course, delve a little deeper and we find other bands such as Alien Kulture, a majority Pakistani Muslim punk band who formed in the late 70s in defiance of Thatcher’s ‘fears’ of being swamped by new cultures. Even going back to the roots of punk you’ll find Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a queer black female guitarist who combined the fire of gospel preaching with the soul of early blues to devise the earliest form of rock & roll.



No matter where you look in history you can find stories of people of colour going against the norm to either add to genres previously considered white or create whole new spaces for themselves. We are there but our stories are fragmented across history. There is no linear narrative to this narrative because as with all history it is written by the dominant culture who, whether with malice or ignorance, repeatedly seek to prop up their own achievements forgetting to acknowledge the black and brown people who inspired or helped them along the way. It’s why the Sex Pistols had two documentaries made about them but a Poly Styrene documentary is only just in the making and had to be crowdfunded by her family.



The Decolonise Fest starts June 2 in London. More info HERE.

Remembering D. Boon Of The Minutemen

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Daily Breeze:

Dennes Dale Boon died 30 years ago this month, on Dec. 22, 1985, to be exact.



{As frontman for the Minutemen} Boon had become a talented guitarist with a distinctive staccato picking style that meshed with {Mike} Watt’s increasingly fluid bass playing and {George} Hurley’s innovative, jazz-influenced drumming. They were a part of the punk scene, but the band’s music, with its elements of funk, hard rock, jazz and punk, was unlike anyone else’s on the scene.



Daily Breeze music writer Michael Lev captured it best in this 1985 appreciation of Boon:



“On stage, D. Boon as performer and singer was pained. He didn’t bother to keep his huge body under control. Instead, it grabbed him, flinging him around the stage so it appeared he was holding onto the neck of his guitar for dear life.”



Gary Waleik in The Observer:

D. Boon was a self-described corndog, but he shed his inhibiting outer layer and became much more; a prodigiously talented guitarist, a spectacular showman and a wonderful songwriter and singer. He fronted a band that, though usually labeled “punk” or “post-punk” was sui generis. Minutemen records sound as fresh and challenging today as they did over 30 years ago. But the most ringing endorsement I could offer is that D. Boon was truly one of the nicest men I have ever met, a rare kind soul in a business that usually exalts and rewards the exact opposite.


It almost seems like an understatement to say that the Minutemen changed my life. They opened me up to the idea that a band doesn’t have to be pigeonholed to exist. They introduced me to the art of the lyric. They helped me become politically aware and concerned with what happens in other parts of the planet. They sold me on the worthy ethos of ‘jam econo‘. So much change in so little time … I embraced the Minutemen in their heyday and soon after I’m reading about D. Boon’s fatal accident in a bottom-of-the-page news item in Rolling Stone Magazine. I still listen to them often – unarguably more than any other band that I was into in my teenage years – and I believe I’m still learning from them.

Watch on YouTube

Here’s an ‘Intro To Minutemen’ playlist on Apple Music.
Here are the Minutemen on Spotify.
Here’s the Minutemen channel on YouTube.