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In today: Exotica LP, Subhumans reissues, Blue Dolphin tapes and a lot more!
As is often the case on Monday, we have quite a few goodies for you! First up is the debut LP from New York's Exotica! Y'all bought a whole lot of copies of their demo tape (both when it was on cassette and when it was later pressed to vinyl, which we just restocked), so I know you're hyped for this LP:
In addition to the Exotica LP, we also have two brand new demos from La Vida Es Un Mus. First up is New York's HVAC:
And then there's the demo from London's Nekra::
I'm also very stoked to have the entire back catalog by the UK Subhumans back in stock! We used to stock these regularly, but I guess that Bluurg Records let these records go out of print for a while and/or lost some of their US distribution. However, they're back in print (at least for now), and you can pick all of them up here. We also recently got in a reissue of Crass's The Feeding of the 5,000 on vinyl, so hopefully we'll see more wax from the Southern Records-affiliated camp (i.e. more Crass, Rudimentary Peni, etc.) soon!
We'll finish things up with a trio of cassette releases from Austin, Texas's Blue Dolphin, which features members of Mystic Inane, Patsy, Institute, and Nosferatu. Blue Dolphin don't really sound like any of those bands... in fact they don't really sound much like anyone else! They do have a sort of countrified hardcore punk thing happening that reminds me a little bit of something like Really Red in places, but really this is its own beast, which is a very, very good thing.
Note: this YouTube embed is for one of the three tapes... the other two should show up in the related videos... they're all similar but well worth checking out in my estimation!
In addition to those we also got in a few other odds and ends over the past few days... a cool power-pop single from Dancer, the new King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard album, and a few other things, so dig in!
Outta Style: Vol 1 - May 2017
Ok so as you’ve seen we’re changing things up a little around SSR, especially on the internet end of things. We’re all super excited about it and hope you all are also. This one’s a little long because we’ve gotten a ton of cool stuff in and because I’ve been super behind, but as far as right now goes the plan is that I’ll be posting a more condensed version of the newsletter every other Monday under the name Outta Style. While there’s always a possibility of it not making it up every Monday (for example this is being posted on a Tuesday) I’m going to try my best to make it happen. So with that said the next post will be on June 12th. But yeah there’s tons of stuff to talk about and I know I didn’t even get to half of what I wanted to write about.
Skull Cult: Vol. 1 Cassette - This is six minutes of manic intensity. Lots of lo-fi KBD feels with a midwest flavor. Super treble soaked guitar, cheap casio sounding keys and probably the tightest drums and super locked in, solid as they come bass. The vocals have a very Liquids feel to them, I think it's all of the effects/fuzziness of them. This features member(s?) of the great Buttzz who's great Summer Luvin tape I loved. While Buttzz were very Ramones-esque pop weirdness Skull Cult are more like a hyper-active Nubs. But yeah get in on the ground level before the hype whisks this one away because this tape is HOT! Also go down to your local recruiting station and get yourself enlisted in the cult, I know I'm going to.
Skull Cult: Vol. 2 Cassette - The second helping of Skull Cult's brand of keyboard infused punk insanity. This one somehow seems crunchier yet poppier than the last tape. Maybe it's the addition of a second keyboard allowing for more complex melodies? The keys definitely have more of an Ausmuteants vibe on this one and feel a lot more up front while the vocals get pushed a little bit more to the back. Skull Cult definitely feel free to skip around between the super tight high-energy punk and poppier tunes more akin to related band Buttzz (what that relation is I'm still clueless on). If you liked their first tape then what is there to lose on getting this one? I mean it costs less than your fancy coffee and will probably get you more ready to face the day and in the end make you a better person. Also after some intense research I have found some documentation that makes me assume that Skull Cult is possibly one person and also has live drums.
Nurse: Discography 12” – Let’s be honest, I’m not raking in the money at SSR. I make an honest living doing this but you know am not about to drop $300 on two 7”s no matter how great they are. And let me tell you the two records that make up this discography are pretty great. The first flexi is super raw and once you get past the endless cheat beat you can tell it’s something special. This has a weird feel of American hardcore in the riffs, kind of Negative Approach like in their simplicity. While a majority of it is pretty straight forward and fast the last song sounds like Part 1 or something, it has that slow stomping funeral dirge feel to it. The second Ep definitely is a little clearer in the recording and features a more prominent bass sound to carry the songs. The songs definitely are slower and not the straight 1-2 beat. Everything just feels a million times more competent and clearer. It definitely has more of a Stalin vibe in it’s kind of more mid paced rock riffs with the flanged (I suck at picking out guitar effects) out guitar? Also there’s some sick guitar fuzzed out guitar solos on this one. This big change obviously comes from Tatsu from Gastunk taking over guitar duties. Definitely a cool piece of history, especially if you’re interested in Japanese Hardcore/Punk and don’t have a wad of cash laying around to get the originals. Here’s some cool live footage of Nurse (not the best quality but still cool)
ISS: (Endless Pussyfooting) Cassette – Another bout of acerbic genius from ISS. If you aren’t clear on what ISS is well, there are two guys, one from Whatever Brains and the other from Brain Flannel, pretty much they sample drums and other random things (such as some X-ray Spex sax) from punk songs and then use it as the foundation for writing their own originals. Super catchy and original, I really can think of little to compare this to. If you checked out their great Studs tape you’ll recognize some of the songs on here like the amazing penISS envy which is a song comprised totally of Crass song titles. I can only imagine how hard putting these vocals was. With lots of weird little skits and samples this plays like a bizarre mixtape, all the songs have a similar core feeling to them but are all vastly different. Even the instrumentation on them is pretty all over the place. A really brilliant release all the way through and highly recommended.
Komplications: Human 12” - Whoa this is like everything I want right now. Super fuzzy synths with bouncy drums and very uk anarcho feeling vocals (I know it’s mostly just the accent but the delivery reminds me of The Subhumans) that also kind of remind me of ISS. This feels super light hearted and fun, no gloom to be found here. Everything just feels perfect on this as far as mix goes. This is a joy to listen to on headphones due to some cool panning stuff with the two synths. Punks with synths is a trend I can always get behind.
Kurraka: Otra Dimension Cassette – Every time I talk with someone about Kurraka it’s really hard not to just yell it like at the beginning of their LP. I was actually working at a record fair the other week and saw a person across the room wearing a Kurraka shirt and had to fight everything in me to not just be a nerd and yell it at them. This tape is definitely a little darker and more spacey feeling than their LP, a lot more brooding than raging. Don’t get me wrong though, this thing still rages. It definitely has a lot of ties into the darker side of anarcho-punk, the dark thick fuzzy guitar and bass definitely hit those Rudimentary Peni feelings. The drums pound away while the vocals go screaming off into the void with tons of delay. This one is definitely to listen to in a dark room with some candles lit. This one is definitely going to be played a ton around the shop.
Ataxxia: S/T 7” – Definitely drenched in Scandinavian Hardcore worship, this has some members of other bands but who cares because this rules without having to be legitimized with a previous work history. This is definitely a banger, even the slow stompy parts have so much energy and power. I really love the bass sound on this, it really comes through on the song Anxiety.
Nag – Files 7” – More Nag! Hot off their Total Punk single, this one’s a little darker feeling than False Anxiety, the whole thing seems to focus more on the sonic aesthetics of the group rather than the vocals and chorus like their previous work. The vocals are still there and still super catchy but feel more spread out. But yeah definitely still Nag meaning there’s no reason to not get this. This one still leads to more questions though, like what is the art on the cover? Is it supposed to be a snake (a very similar one is on the Total Punk single). Also is it pronounced Nag or more like Nog? I’m sure we’ll never find out.
Dream Probe: Demo Cassette – On their bandcamp this is described as “Cool Ass Tape” and I definitely agree. New band from Illinois, this is wild and blown out, everything feels in the red on the recording. This reminds me of circle pits at a house show on a beer soaked floor. Definitely super cool and has been getting listens when I’m home alone so I can rage out while drinking my coffee.
Mutual Jerk – S/T 7” – A better recording helps flesh out what was happening on their demo. With very talking vocals that remind me somewhat of Uranium Club or something but with their tongue sticking out at you while flipping you off rather than planted deeply in their cheek. This definitely has a post-punk feel but without the edges sanded down. There’s still lots of splinters and jagged edges to it. This definitely feels more rooted in hardcore than something like Total Control (which the guitar at points reminds me of a little). Listen to while loathing society and other people.
Punk Ekman: S/T 7” – I’m assuming this is at least Joni Ekman from the great Achtungs. Considering that he was one of the main writers of Achtungs stuff this sounds pretty much up that alley but a little more jittery feeling.
Various: Domestic Sampler UNYU 12” – This flat out rules. Lots of weird minimal synth/post-punk from Barcelona. Definitely hits on some of the more avant-garde side of things at points but it’s definitely a cool mix of stuff. The El Grito Acusador song is probably my favorite though.
Erik Nervous – Ice Cream 7” – I’ve been waiting for this one for a while. Erik actually yells on this one but really the guitar stuff on this is a dream and makes the song. But yeah possibly two of the best songs in a very impressive discography. Erik Nervous gets totally punk on this one.
New releases from Skemäta, Gay Kiss, and Excessive Cruelty out now on Sorry State!
Sorry State has three new releases ready for mass consumption! We haven't put out a batch of releases that are this straight up hardcore in a while, so we're hoping everyone is going to be really excited about these! Here's the info:
First up is the brand new LP from Raleigh's Skemäta, A Bright Shining Hell. Here's the description:
Excessive Cruelty is a new band featuring key players from the Bay Area’s Strung Up, who were simultaneously one of the best-regarded and most underrated bands of the explosion of early 80s-style US hardcore in the early 2000s. If you’re smart enough to be familiar with Strung Up’s catalog (and if you’re not… do your homework!), you’ll be pleased to know that the blisteringly fast rhythms, complex riffing, gruff vocals and literate, socially aware lyrics are still very much present in Excessive Cruelty’s sound. You can also hear a touch of thrash and crossover influence here—which makes sense given that guitarist Dan Randall spent many of the intervening years since Strung Up disbanded playing in Ghoul—but like Dealing with It-era DRI or American Paranoia-era Attitude Adjustment, this is hardcore with metallic elements and not the other way around. Any way you slice it, though, this 12” delivers 6 blistering dispatches of pure rage and energy.
New releases from Iron Lung Records in now!
Here's a package we've been REALLY amped for... the new releases from Iron Lung Records! Here's a quick rundown:
First up is the new LP from the UK's Bad Breeding! Their previous self-released 12"s was one of our favorite records of last year, and I couldn't be more stoked for the follow-up, particularly since they've found the perfect US label home in ILR:
Next up we have probably my most anticipated record of the bunch, the debut 7" from San Francisco punks Mozart! We carried Mozart's demo cassette a while back, and this 7" is even better. They literally sound like nothing I've ever heard before... maybe imagine Wretched jamming on some free jazz, or vice versa? This is about as far from cookie-cutter punk as you get, and I'm complete addicted to the feeling of reckless abandon captured on this record. Oh, and in a nice little touch every copy of the record is individually hand-painted:
Next up there's the new LP from Behavior. I remember their previous material being very abstract and difficult, but this new LP strikes me as downright accessible without losing the forward-thinking artiness that characterizes much of the ILR roster. I strongly recommend giving this one a listen:
And then there's the reissue of the Blinded album by the mighty Cold Sweat. This one seemed to disappear in an instant the first time around, so it's nice to see it back in print.
And finally, wrapping up this embarrassment of riches is a new cassette of radio sessions by Brazil's almighty Rakta!
In addition to all of these ILR goodies we also have a killer d-beat 7" from Mexico's Assassini and a demo cassette from Atlanta's Muddle, so check those out as well!
KILLER new punk and hardcore in today: Muff Divers, PMS 84, Una Bestia Incontrolable, Slimy Member, and Lux!
So, first of all, there's a TON of stuff in today, so you'll probably want to skim through the whole new arrivals section. However, if you're a highlight reel type of person there are five releases you really need to pay attention to... I know five is still a lot, but don't hold it against us that these all happened to arrive on the same day.
First up we have my personal favorite of the bunch, the new LP from Muff Divers! Muff Divers is Joe Sussman (Nancy, Dangus Darkus) along with AJ (who played in Gas Rag, but also played drums for Cülo nearly every time I saw them) playing up-beat, poppy punk that's a lot like Joe's other bands but also a little different... maybe a little more glam? But also more blatantly Ramones-influenced? I don't know, but I do know this LP RULES:
Next up we have the debut LP from Portland punks PMS 84! PMS 84 have been a perennial favorite around Sorry State ever since their first EP, so it's great to see they've carried on to the LP stage. This is some bruising UK82-influenced punk with a higher than average catchiness quotient:
Then after that there's the new EP from Spain's Una Bestia Incontrolable! Whenever Paco at La Vida Es Un Mus releases one of these left-of-center hardcore records I'm always super stoked, and Una Bestia are one of the best bands playing this style.
Also in the "long-awaited" category is the new LP from Texas's Slimy Member! Slimy Member manage somehow to be both gother and punker than you. Most modern goth-punk bands bore the crap out of me, but Slimy Member keep it nice and punk.
Finishing things up is a demo from a new band you might not have heard of: Spain's Lux. I don't know much about Lux except for the fact that they feature Louis from Good Throb and Shitty Limits on drums. They have more of a raw, anarcho-influenced sound, but it retains a lot of the catchiness of Louis's other bands. He's one of my favorite musicians and I always pay attention his new projects, and this one maintains his consistently high level of quality.
Like I said, there's a lot more than this in today, including some really notable stuff, so check out the new arrivals!
Fried E/M, Mala Leche, and Trauma Harness new 7"s on Lumpy, new Adult Crash releases, a bunch of '77-era reissues, and more!
First up today we have 3 new releases on Lumpy Records! We've got new EPs from Fried E/M, Trauma Harness, and Mala Leche. Check them out below:
We also got two of the new releases from Denmark's great Adult Crash Records, new 7"s from Planet Y and Damaged Head. Unfortunately we weren't able to get copies of their other new release, the debut 7" from Tyrant, but I hear that a repress of that is already on the way and hopefully we can snag copies of that. Planet Y is highly recommended for all of you Gorilla Angreb fans out there:
Continuing with today's big mail day, we have two new releases on California's Nervous Intent Records: new LPs from Texas post-punkers Crooked Bangs and California's Street Eaters:
Continuing on, we also have the debut 7" from Bay Area post-punks Özti:
Believe it or not, there was even more than that in our mailbox today! We also got in a cool picture disc reissue of Darkthrone's classic A Blaze in the Northern Sky album, a couple of cool '77-era reissues from bands like Slime and Mordbuben Ag, the new LP from Australia's Kitchen People, and a new 7" from Buck Biloxi! And that's still not everything, so peep the new arrivals page if you're trying to dig even deeper.
3 New Releases Out Now on Sorry State: Joint D≠, Natural Causes, and Mind Dweller
Oh happy day! 3 new releases are now available from Sorry State Records! Here's the skinny on each:
A highly significant leaked dossier of ripping hardcore, ‘Intelligence’ is dripping with arch rage and lateral hatred. This unrelenting dispatch from camp ≠ sees their quick fire bile launcher trained expertly on insidious fascisms old and new, looking both inwards to their home state of North Carolina and outwards to the murderous effects of American foreign policy, facing down this complex cluster fuck without flinching, reduction or cliché, instead deploying all the class, riffs and wordplay you’ve come expect from these quarters. Fusing the wild-ass pace Japanese hardcore mania with riffs recalling Poison Idea at their moist concentrated dose, Intelligence is both a sonic ultimatum and a helpful compass. Mandatory listening for both those who are just waking up to the nightmare, and those, like Joint D≠, who’ve had eyes on their drones in the sky for quite some time. - bryony beynon
The second big slab from North Carolina’s Natural Causes. While their first record on the Snot Releases label was a rough around the edges affair with raw production and a clear fascination with the jittery, pop-inflected synth-punk of bands like Ausmuteants or Lost Sounds, this second self-titled effort finds the band “maturing” in all the right ways. , whether you’re talking about the brooding, Fall-esque “Average Cost of Living,” the up-tempo garage punk of “Gun,” or the big, careening melodies of “New Hues.” The production here is also much clearer and more powerful than before, revealing far more depth to the band’s sound than what you could hear on the earlier 12”. We tend to love bands that fall in the cracks between subgenres here at Sorry State, and the way Natural Causes combine the atmospheric arrangements and angular riffing of post-punk with the energy of garage-punk, all the while sprinkling the whole thing liberally with big pop melodies, makes them a perfect fit for the label. Recommended if you like your punk loud and aggressive, but still forward-thinking and adventurous.
This LP comes with a beautifully-designed jacket featuring a 2-color print on raw chipboard.
Mind Dweller features members of most of the key Raleigh hardcore bands of the past several years coming together to play a riff-driven style of rocked-out punk that has pretty much one relevant historical antecedent: Annihilation Time. There have been countless bands that have attempted to fuse rock and punk, but like Annihilation Time, Mind Dweller don’t skimp on the rock or the punk, taking the best parts of 70s hard rock and infusing it with hardcore energy. And while a lot of bands go wrong with this style by having vocals that sound like either Eddie Vedder or Joe Denunzio, Mind Dweller’s vocalist takes an RKL-like approach where he sounds punk as hell but also has a range of more than one note. Whether this style is right in your wheelhouse or whether you’re incredibly picky about your rocked-out punk, Mind Dweller have what you need.
Limited to 100 pro-duplicated cassettes in purple shells with a full color j-card.
If you're a Sorry State Records superfan we're also offering bundle pricing if you want to grab all three of these new releases, which not only gets you all three new releases but also saves you a few bucks. You can check out the bundle here.
Now, you may be wondering to yourself, "wasn't Sorry State supposed to release the new Excessive Cruelty record on April 7?" Well, here's a pic of that one:
Looks pretty cool, huh? Well, unfortunately I can't sell it to you because when the pressing showed up at the store yesterday we realized that every single copy is visibly warped. This is pretty much a complete nightmare, but we're soldiering through and trying to move through the claims process and have these repressed. So I'm guessing it'll be at least a month until I can sell these to you, perhaps more. This is far from the only problem we've had with this batch of releases... the new Natural Causes jackets originally showed up without any of the white printing on the jacket (and consequently you may find those misprinted jackets used as packing material in a future order), the Joint D≠ LP probably went through half a dozen artwork resubmissions before it was accepted, and now an entire pressing is warped! Actually getting these things realized and into the physical world has been a real ordeal, so know that when you buy these a truly extraordinary amount of effort has gone into them.
Today: Subnormal Girls Vol 2 comp LP, Exit Order LP, and a minimal synth classic
Lots of cool new stuff in the shop today! First up is volume two of the Subnormal Girls compilation series, which compiles vintage post-punk tunes with women musicians playing prominent roles:
Next up is the much-anticipated debut LP from Boston's Exit Order! Their 7" turned a lot of heads, and the LP is bound to as well.
Finally, we have a very limited reissue of a minimal synth classic that I won't mention the name of. However, it's one of the absolute best of that genre. Listen below, but grab it quick because these will probably be gone within a day or so.
That's not all! We also have the retrospective LP from German post-punks Trummerfrauen, a killer debut 7" from Cleveland's Roobydocks (featuring members of Bulsch) and the new issue of Maximumrocknroll!
Just in: 5 new releases from Neck Chop Records!
We just got in the latest 5 releases from the almighty Neck Chop Records! Debut vinyl from Macho Boys, Beatniks, Race Car, C.H.E.W., and Schizos. Check them out below:
You can buy them individually here, but we're also offering a limited amount of bundles where you receive all 5 releases for a few bucks less than you'd pay individually, and you even get a cool Neck Chop Records tote bag! Check out the bundle here.
All Things to All People Vol. 19
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how punk’s tendrils creep out into other parts of the world. A few weeks ago someone brought this article on medium with the headline “Shopify is now the single largest source of revenue for Steve Bannon’s Breitbart” to my attention. When I first saw the article’s headline I was horrified. To me, the article’s title seemed to imply that Breitbart owned Shopify. Sorry State uses Shopify (more on that below), and I was simply gutted to think that I was putting money directly into the hands of a right-wing organization like this. However, when I read the article more closely, I realized that Breitbart has no ownership stake in Shopify at all; rather, Breitbart simply uses Shopify’s software to manage their ecommerce operation. Further, the author presents absolutely no evidence for his claim that their Shopify store really is Breitbart’s largest source of revenue. After I actually read the article, my anger quickly shifted to the author of this article and to the people who spread it around. The article’s headline is clearly deceptive, and as a friend pointed out to me, it seems like a thinly veiled attempt for the writer to get some publicity and coin a trending hashtag.
The person who originally pointed out the article to me gently suggested that I reconsider using Shopify, so I had a decision to make. Let me be clear: I want absolutely nothing to do with Breitbart or their ilk and I would never put money knowingly into their pockets. However, from my perspective what this amounts to is that I am a customer of the same company as Breitbart. By no means is Shopify the only company that has both Breitbart and Sorry State on its list of customers… while I haven’t actually checked, I’m fairly certain that Breitbart uses social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to spread their message (and I’m sure you can find even worse groups than Breitbart on these services), uses Google, Facebook, and other advertising networks to drive traffic to their sites, and they probably use Amazon for their office supplies, wear Levis jeans, eat Cheerios, get blank t-shirts from the same places that supplied whoever screened your cool Disclose bootleg concert tee, and also use tons other products and services that Sorry State, thousands of other punk stores and distros, and pretty much every single person reading this also uses. Does that excuse us? Of course not, but it does put the issue into perspective.
Further, when I actually thought about what it would take to move away from Shopify, I was kind of shocked at how expensive and time-consuming that it would be. For better or for worse, Sorry State is no longer a box of records sitting in the corner of my bedroom. We have leases on two pieces of real estate (our storefront and another facility that we use for a warehouse and as practice spaces for a number of Raleigh bands) along with several other recurring monthly bills, and more importantly while I (Daniel, the owner) don’t rely on Sorry State financially because I still have a full-time job, Sorry State currently has 3 employees who depend on it for all or a significant part of their livelihood. We can’t simply shut down our Shopify site while we try to figure out a better solution, because doing so would grind us to a halt. Shopify’s software provides the backbone for our entire operation… it’s a rare moment when someone at Sorry State is sitting at a computer and at least one of the browser’s tabs isn’t on Shopify. There’s an enormous amount of data associated with our Shopify account, and transferring that data to a new platform would take weeks, if not months, and probably have significant leakage that resulted in problems that impact customers. Further, based on my research Shopify is still the best platform for us, so we’d be doing all of that work and investing all of that time and money to move to a solution that doesn’t work as well for us. All because we don’t like the optics of shopping at the same place as Breitbart. All things being equal, I would choose a company that had nothing to do with Breitbart over a company that has dealings with them. But, unfortunately, all things are not equal in our case.
So, I’ve made the decision to stick with Shopify for the time being. If you want to criticize me for that decision, please feel free to send your message to the store via (independently owned) carrier pigeon.
So, I just spent the past several paragraphs basically throwing up my hands at our inability to extract ourselves from the web of capitalism, but now I’m going to change gears and suggest that you rethink how you are ensnared in a very similar (or, really, precisely the same) web: YouTube.
I’m very late to the party on YouTube; it’s only within the past several months that I discovered that YouTube seems to have become the default service for finding and listening to music for many punks. It’s gotten to the point where the owners of certain YouTube accounts and channels have become mini-celebrities within the punk scene, none more so than the enigmatic Jimmy. Jimmy has become a real brand—for lack of a better term—within the punk scene not only by posting all of the cool new punk demos before pretty much anyone else (particularly demos that come from the fertile Northwest Indiana scene, to which he appears to have some close connections), but also by commenting extensively on nearly everything he posts in a voice that is peculiar but distinctive and engaging. I freely admit that Sorry State relies heavily on Jimmy’s YouTube channel (along with a few others) to find out about new releases to carry, and his channel really is an invaluable resource for anyone hoping to stay up to date on the latest punk.
However, here’s the problem. To my mind, at least, the reason that YouTube has become so ubiquitous as a music service is because nearly everything—particularly from the world of DIY and punk—is on there. Why is YouTube’s selection so comprehensive? Well, because nearly every single fucking thing on there is pirated! Indeed, looking for DIY punk on YouTube brings me back to the wild west days of digital piracy in the early 2000s when everyone was using services like Napster and Soulseek. In particular, the wildly inconsistent level of quality of the rips reminds me of sorting through tons of low-bitrate and low-quality rips on Napster, and part of the reason that “name brand” channels like Jimmy have managed to emerge is because of the consistently high quality of their rips (along with, of course, their well-curated selections).
So, why should you care that YouTube is to intellectual property as a Swiss bank is to money? I don’t really mind piracy myself, and indeed I even jump on Soulseek infrequently when I want to find mp3s or flac files of something I want to hear but isn’t easily available. However, to me YouTube cheapens rather than honors the value of music and DIY punk in particular. For YouTube (and their parent company, Google), music is just content. Whether we’re talking about the Pick Your KingEP, Citizen Kane, an episode of Cheers, a teenager’s vlog, a cute cat video, a clip of someone getting hit in the balls, or an ISIS beheading video, it’s all just content to YouTube. It’s all the same, and if you choose not to upload your band’s demo to YouTube I really doubt they give a fuck because there are far more people watching the other videos mentioned above. In other words, there’s a kind of flatness to the way that content is presented on YouTube that makes me uncomfortable. In theory I suppose it’s a good thing that everything is presented on the same level, but I think that music is way more important than all of that other stuff (well, maybe not Citizen Kane, but you take my point). Listening to music is, for me, a sacred activity. It’s my favorite thing to do in the world. And to put it on the same level as all of the completely inane and worthless content on YouTube is downright offensive. And that doesn’t even go into the fact that when you use YouTube (either as a viewer or as an uploader), you are putting money directly into Google’s pockets, money they only deign to “share” with you once you’ve reached a certain threshold of popularity (a.ka. when you’ve already made them a bunch of cash) and you specifically ask for it.
To illustrate what I’m talking about, think about the way that music is presented on YouTube versus the way that it’s presented on BandCamp. Now, as far as I know, the people who own and develop BandCamp are not punks (though I’ve noticed there are a couple of punks who write content for them), but they are clearly people who love and value music. From what I can tell piracy is virtually non-existent on BandCamp, so the overwhelming majority of content on the site has been directly uploaded by its creators and/or owners. While BandCamp has a fairly rigid structure for the way they present albums, they do allow the creator control over the header image and background, and most bands and labels take the time to customize their site to match their own individual aesthetic. The albums are presented with high-quality audio (you can even download lossless files) and artwork, which are the focal point of the page design. Albums do not auto-play or even auto-repeat… the point is not to “listen to something,” but to hear this particular album, this work of art. There are no advertisements, only links to other works by the same artist or label. Basically, when I look at a BandCamp page for an album it seems like they’re trying to set the scene, to get you in the right headspace to appreciate the music and transport you into the artist’s world. As a lover of music, I appreciate that.
When you listen to something on YouTube, by contrast, your listening is often preceded and/or frequently interrupted by ads, most of which are irrelevant to both the content of the video and the interests of the person watching it. The sound that comes out is low-quality and ignores “little details” like track titles and breaks. The artwork rarely matches the aspect ratio of the video, so you get big black bars that fill all of the empty space. On the right side of the video you have a list of “related content” that could be just about anything. Google has spent millions developing their algorithms so they’re pretty darn good at knowing what I want to hear, but the recommendations definitely lack a human touch, something that quickly becomes apparent if you haven’t taken the time to disable autoplay, which simply dumps you unceremoniously into the next video YouTube wants you to watch. This often creates a telephone game-style distortion effect, so while you start out listening to some rad old, obscure Finnish hardcore, just a few rolls of the autoplay dice later you’re listening to one of Varg from Burzum’s racist rants.
And then there’s the financial issues. When you buy an album on BandCamp, the person who uploaded that content (who is almost always the person who created and/or owns that content) gets the lion’s share of the money. Who the fuck knows where YouTube’s money goes, but I do hear that the cafeteria at Google’s headquarters is really nice. I’m particularly annoyed by the YouTube Red service that they’re constantly trying to sell. As far as I can tell, the main benefit of the service is that it allows you to play YouTube videos while your smartphone’s screen is off, so that you can basically use it like you would use Spotify or any other streaming service. But how much of that $9.99 monthly fee that you pay for that service is actually going to the artists? It’s unclear, but I would be willing to bet that it’s a far smaller percentage that what goes to artists from services that bill themselves straightforwardly as streaming music services. And, of course, when it comes to the wealth of pirated content on YouTube, Google just keeps all of them money that would go to those artists for themselves.
Like I said, I use YouTube, but I also think that it sucks. Whenever possible, I try to avoid things that suck in favor of better options.
Ending things on a lighter note, my recent musical obsession has been Krautrock (which is probably not unrelated to moving away from prescription meds and toward more, shall we say, “natural” ways of managing my anxiety). Recently a little collection of original Can LPs came in at the store and I decided to take them home, and while I’ve always liked Can and even owned a few of their records already, something about listening to these original copies of Tago Mago and Soon Over Babaluma hit me just right. I don’t know if it’s because they just sound better than the represses or what, but I was struck by the power of the drums in particular. At night my favorite activity is to sit on the little loveseat in my office / record room and just blast records while I stare off into space, and blasting these two records took me to a place I’d never visited before. The music is powerful, but also intricate… listening to it and fully immersing myself in it feels like I’m making my way through a dense but beautiful jungle.
Once Can hit me so hard I decided to start exploring a little further, consulting some “best Krautrock albums” lists on the internet and checking out artists I’ve heard of but hadn’t really given much attention in the past. I’ve probably checked out a dozen or so bands at this point, my favorites being the first three Amon Düül II albums (Yeti in particular) and the first Ash Ra Tempel LP. We actually had a copy of Ash Ra Tempel in the store a few months ago, and while I haven’t quite fallen in love to the point where I would pay the $200 we sold that copy for, I do wish that I had taken it home for a little test drive before I let it go.
Listening to all of this Krautrock stuff also made a light bulb go off over my head. I realized that I was listening to this stuff in a completely different way than how I listen to the punk, metal, and rock that forms the largest part of my listening diet. After reflecting on it for a while, I’ve come to think of the two modes of listening as episodic versus cinematic. My normal mode of listening is episodic, because most pop music is kind of circular… it contains a lot of repeating parts and themes, and much of the gratification of listening comes from recognizing a part when it comes back around, particularly if you recognize it well enough to participate by singing along or dancing. I call this mode of listening episodic because it’s sort of like watching an episode of a long-running favorite TV show. You’re familiar with the set, the characters, and the basic structure of the plot, and you get both a sense of security and familiarity from recognizing all of these tropes and you also get the pleasure of focusing on and thinking about the subtle differences in how these elements are utilized and combined in a particular episode. However, listening to this Krautrock stuff isn’t really like that. Instead, it’s more like watching a movie. Particularly if it’s not a simple genre exercise, watching a movie is very different from watching a TV show. At the beginning of a movie you kind of surrender yourself to the filmmaker’s will and trust them to take you on a journey to somewhere you’ve never gone before. Sure, you might have some expectations about where you’ll go and there are a library of go-to tropes for setting up and managing that journey, but as a whole the experience is longer and much wider in scope, and I think that it requires a higher degree of trust between the author and the audience. When I drop the needle on one of these albums, I’m essentially thinking “OK, where are we going to go?” and I get comfortable and just try to ride out all of the twists and turns that the musicians take me through.
Recognizing this difference between my episodic and cinematic listening modes has also led me to dabble in other genres. For instance, I quickly recognized that the line between Krautrock and jazz fusion is pretty fuzzy and permeable. I’d always kind of hated jazz fusion (though some of the genre classics fell into the “tolerable” category), but suddenly my ears were open to the places fusion artists wanted to take me. I’ve also been really into drumming and hearing complex rhythmic patterns, which has prompted me to revisit Fela Kuti, Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain, and the work of great jazz drummers like Max Roach. And from there it was just a short jump into the free jazz and spiritual jazz that I’ve always been more intrigued by than actually liked. I don’t think I’ve ever “gotten” Albert Ayler like I have in the past few months, and this mode of listening has helped me to get more out of Alice Coltrane and John Coltrane’s later stuff like Interstellar Space than I’ve ever heard before. The spiritual jazz stuff is particularly well suited to this mode of listening, because it seems like travel is a central metaphor in that music… I mean, Alice Coltrane’s most famous albums is called Journey In Satchidananda and the conceit of Interstellar Space seems to be a trip through the solar system. (Incidentally, it’s always bugged me that all of the shorter pieces on Interstellar Space are named after planets in our solar system… if we’re only exploring one star system on this journey, wouldn’t IntRAstellar Space be a more accurate title?) While I still spend most of my time listening to punk, I feel like a door has been opened to a whole different world that I can access any time I want just by spinning a record.
I’ll leave it here for now. Hopefully it won’t be so long until my next post.
All Things to All People Vol. 18
I've been meaning to write for quite some time about why I hate sports. I'm sure there are a lot of you out there who are very much not on board with this statement, so let me explain.
I got my PhD from the University of North Carolina, which happens to be a part, along with Duke University, of one of the bitterest and most contested rivalries in all of spectator sports. It's a longstanding tradition at Carolina that graduating seniors are guaranteed tickets to the UNC / Duke basketball game. This is a HUGE deal. Even when both teams are completely in the toilet, the UNC / Duke game always sells out and is always hotly contested. Fortunately for me, the "graduating seniors" rule includes graduate students completing their degrees. Despite the fact that I only paid the most minimal attention to basketball the entire time I was at UNC, I decided to take advantage of this perk during my last semester of grad school.
I have to admit that it was pretty cool. I'd been to a couple of basketball games before, but sitting in the student section was wild... the energy level was actually comparable to a big hardcore show. There's definitely a kind of power in groupthink... you get a bunch of people in the same room all thinking and feeling the same thing and the power and momentum of the group can sweep you away. Further, it was a really good game. UNC pulled way ahead at the half, but Duke chipped away at the lead throughout the second half and finally won the game on a buzzer-beater 3-pointer. The stadium went completely quiet... there were over 20,000 people in that room and you could have heard a pin drop. It was amazing.
I had a lot of fun at the game, but I went alone and was surrounded by people I didn't know, so I had a lot of time to reflect on what was happening around me, and something kept happening during the game that really bothered me. Every time the refs would call a foul on a UNC player everyone in the student section would scream "BULLSHIT!," even when the UNC player had clearly committed the foul. Every time a UNC player missed a shot and a Duke player was within arm's length, everyone would scream "FOUL!" I felt like I wasn't watching the same game as these people... I was watching a really exciting contest between two evenly-matched teams, while they were peering into some alternate universe where UNC was always right and Duke was always wrong.
I taught English at UNC throughout my time there, and it wasn't lost on me that these were the very same students whom I was trying to teach critical thinking skills in my classes. The same students who, instead of thinking honestly, deeply, and rationally about the questions I asked them, consistently groped blindly for what they were "supposed" to say. At that moment it dawned on me what I was up against. One semester or even one undergraduate curriculum wasn't going to cure these students of the habits of mind that fandom taught them. Logic is grim, complicated, and doesn't always tell you what you want to hear. Fandom is simple and straightforward and you're always surrounded by like-minded people.
Once I observed this habit of mind I started seeing it everywhere: people who idolize bands and refuse to consider that they may have ever written a bad note; or, conversely (and much more common in punk and hardcore), people who have written off bands and refuse to consider that they may have ever done anything worthwhile; people who stick to ridiculous premises like "vaccines cause autism" or "global warming isn't happening" despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary; religion; nationalism and patriotism; the preference for certain consumer products over others... I mean, I could go on all day. Once people decide they are on a certain "team" they are committed to their cause at all costs, whether or not their allegiance is based on anything rational or even real.
By far the most insidious of these calcified habits of belief is political affiliation. Nowhere is the fan mentality more apparent than when it comes to American politics. Really, it's probably worse when it comes to politics than sports because the political divisions in the US correlate with much deeper social and cultural differences, while it's pretty arbitrary whether you decide to become a fan of the Minnesota Vikings or the Chicago Blackhawks or whatever. The force with which a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat can believe that Republicans don't have a single good idea (or vice versa) is mind-boggling to me. However, it's the fan mentality at work. Donald Trump says it? Then it's wrong. Bernie Sanders says it? It's right. No further consideration or investigation needed. If you really want to understand the political gridlock in the United States I think that you have to think about this fan mentality. When you see a black-and-white world where your team is always right and the other time is always wrong, there simply isn't space for compromise.
So that's why I hate sports, and why I hate contemporary American politics even more than I hate sports. There are few things in this world I like more than a good conversation or a stimulating argument, and these institutions propagate exactly the kind of bullshit (a carefully chosen word) that gets in the way of me having more of those things.
And now a tale from the record-buying front...
In my last blog post I wrote about my recent interested in Mixcloud, but in addition to Mixcloud shows I also like a handful of more traditional podcasts. I'll spare you the list for now, but over the past few months two of the podcasts that I listen to have featured Walter Schreifels, and on both episodes he mentioned a radio station called WLIR.
One day I was sitting in the back room of the store when I got an email from the secretary for a boat manufacturer in Edenton, North Carolina. Edenton is a tiny town on the northern bank of the Albemarle Sound in eastern North Carolina and is, almost literally, in the middle of nowhere. The email mentioned that her boss had a collection of several thousand records that once belonged to a radio station that his brother helped run in New York in the 70s and 80s. I wrote back and asked for more information and she couldn't tell me much about the records, but she did tell me that the radio station's call letters were WLIR.
When I looked up WLIR on Wikipedia I nearly fell out of my chair. In particular the following sentence had the record collector in me salivating: "As punk and new wave rock started to become popular at the end of the 1970s, most rock stations in the United States ignored these genres. WLIR, again, bucked the trend by playing artists from these genres." Reading further about WLIR's new wave years, I learned that, "WLIR became the first radio station in the country to play U2, The Cure, The Smiths, New Order, Duran Duran, Madonna, George Michael, Men at Work and Prince." I asked if this was the same WLIR whose records she had and she confirmed that, yes, it was, and that her boss's brother had run the station throughout the 70s and 80s.
One cold, rainy morning in early February I drove out to Edenton, which is a couple of hours away from Raleigh. The entire time I was driving I tried to convince myself that this wasn't what I thought it was going to be, that this was going to be a collection full of the same kind of dross that I see in at least half of the collections that I look at. However, another part of my mind spun little tales about what might be there. I mean, if you were a punk band in New York in the 70s or early 80s and there was a big commercial station playing music kind of like yours, wouldn't you take a chance and send them a promo? Let's say you're Agnostic Front and you've just released United Blood, or you're a band called Chronic Sick from across the river in New Jersey and you just put out your first single... wouldn't you drop one in the mail on the off chance they'd play it?
As I weaved my way through sleepy downtown Edenton and down toward the shore of the sound, I had no idea what I would find. When I pulled up I saw what could only generously be termed a building. By this point it was raining buckets so I knocked on the door a couple of times but quickly just opened the door and let myself in. No one seemed to notice. The wood-paneled office was eerily quiet, and I could hear big, fat raindrops falling in through the barely-functioning roof. After poking around for a minute or two I found a quiet, dingy little office where a 95-year-old man sat at a shiny new iMac. This was the owner of both the boat manufacturing facility I was in and the record collection that I came to look at.
He told me a bit about his life. He grew up in New York and had been in advertising on Madison Avenue through the 50s ("Mad Men was a very accurate show," he told me), and eventually his love of sailing had brought him to Edenton to start a company that manufactured custom, high-end sailboats. His brother, he said, was in the media industry and ran WLIR for a few decades until he lost control of the frequency through some sort of strange bureaucratic coup that I didn't really understand. His brother, though he was younger, had advanced-stage alzheimer's so it was left to him to deal with the records. Apparently they had been deposited in the boat factory sometime in the early 90s.
Finally, he said, "do you want to see the records?" and he led me to a room where I saw this:
My heart leapt and sank at the same time. The spidey sense I have for records definitely dinged and pointed my attention toward the copy of The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead on top of one of those giant stacks (you can see it on the right-hand side of the photo above)... this was the fabled WLIR library. However, the room smelled of mold. It was raining and water was literally dripping onto the records. They had been stacked horizontally for twenty-five years... the mix of emotions was profound.
The owner guided me through the collection, which they had sorted by condition. They had several hundred sealed records sitting on a counter. The Smiths LP was in a pile of several thousand records that, he told me, had jackets that were "not in good condition," which actually meant that the jackets were stuck together and the paper was so brittle that it would crack like a popadom. The other, larger stack (easily 5-8000 LPs) he insisted were in good condition, but honestly weren't much better. Jackets were stuck together, many were water damaged, all smelled musty, and of course the big problem was that after being stored in those stacks for so long warping would be a huge problem. He left me to it and I started sifting through the stacks, unable to use Discogs because I had no data reception in such a remote location.
I pulled a box of 100 or so LPs that I knew would be worth the effort of cleaning up and selling. One of the first things I found in the stack of sealed records was a sealed original Braineater pressing of the Wipers' Over the Edge, and the other big score was several sealed copies of the Labrynth movie soundtrack, which was a particularly hot ticket item since David Bowie had just died. I found lots of bigger-name '77 punk like the Jam, the Rezillos, and the Buzzcocks... TONS of promos from labels like Sire and IRS. Some stuff I grabbed just because it looked cool, which resulted in probably my favorite discovery of the trip, the German synth-punk / proto-industrial artist Tommi Stumpff:
It was impossible to go through everything there, so in addition to the records I cherry-picked, I also convinced the guy to let me take one or two of the big vertical stacks of records you see in the pic above, the idea being that it would serve as a representative sample and I could use it to figure out what kind of deal I could make for the entire lot. I made my way through that stuff over the next few weeks, but there were no great shakes there. There were plenty of OK LPs, but lots more promo 12" singles for long-forgotten power-pop bands, and given the issues with the records' general mustiness and the fact that one out of at least every five records was severely warped, it just wasn't worth the effort to go back and get the rest of them. I'm sure there are plenty of gems there, but it's only one out of every 500 or so records, and I can't take 10,000+ records into my possession just to get a few dozen interesting items. Further, the owner was convinced that he could find someone who was a fan of the station to buy the entire lot for nostalgia purposes... he thought that there had to be some rich New Yorker who grew up listening to WLIR and would want to put the collection in their basement or something, but I don't think any rich people would want to fuck with 10,000+ moldy records.
Oh, and you may be wondering why I started this by bringing up Walter Schreifels. Well, on both of the podcasts that I heard him on, the hosts asked him why he thought Gorilla Biscuits' music was so much more accessible than the music of the other bands of their time and place, and both times he gave more or less the same answer. He said that there was this radio station out on Long Island called WLIR that played all of the hip new British music like the Jam and the Smiths, and that he discovered all of that at the same time he was discovering Agnostic Front and Minor Threat. His songwriting, he insisted, was a fusion of those two sets of influences. So, the copy of The Queen Is Dead that you see above could very well be the exact same copy that was played on the air and inspired Walter Schreifels. Wild, huh?
I've had a lot of response to my last blog post, which has been really nice. I feel like I must have been fishing for compliments because people have been so nice to me. Honestly, though, it has been a difficult summer. About two years ago I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, which up until this summer I thought I'd kicked with a combination of meds and therapy. Basically, I get caught in these cycles of worry that I can't break... my mind keeps thinking about all kinds of terrible scenarios and I can't force those thoughts out of my head in order to concentrate on the things I need to be thinking about at any given moment. Even worse, my body is constantly in fight or flight mode... all of my muscles are clenched tight, my heart races... it's that feeling when you feel like you're about to be in a fight, but I feel like that almost all the time. Not only is it terrible in and of itself, but even when I manage not to feel keyed up I feel sore, exhausted, and irritable because I've been in this anxious state for so long.
Over the past few weeks my anxiety has come back with a vengeance thanks to a kind of perfect storm of stress factors. If there are two things that can send me into this spiral it's money problems and worry about disappointing people (hence the title of this blog), and I'm dealing with both of those things in full force right now. I've mentioned in the email newsletter that they demolished the rehearsal studios where my band and almost all of my friends' bands practiced here in Raleigh, and I've been trying to find a new option. Basically, what I've been trying to do is find a new commercial space that can serve as a rehearsal studio and also serve a handful of other Sorry State / Raleigh punk functions. I've been looking at properties, talking to realtors, trying to figure out business plans... it's a lot to handle and it's occupied almost all of my attention this summer. Now I'm finally close to the point of signing a lease, but unfortunately this is coming at the slowest part of the year for retail and we have basically no spare cash. The last few weeks of July and the first few weeks of August are always tough and I'm always low on money, and this year is no different. I found a space that I think could be the future of Raleigh punk rock and I've put in an application for a lease, but it will cost me over $4000 to move in. Right now I just don't have that money, and it's frustrating. Further, not only do I not have the liquid cash, but Sorry State has a pretty substantial (to me at least) debt, so I wonder if I should even be starting a whole new venture when I haven't actually figured out how to make a profit or even pay myself with the store and the distro. Not that my goal is to make a profit, but when I lose money (and I always do) the bills have to get paid somehow, and that's when the anxiety starts. I see this point on the horizon where I want to be, but I can't figure out how to get there. It may work itself out, but in the meantime I've been spending pretty much every waking hour making myself sick with worry about whether and how I can make this work.
I wish I could just figure this out and get it settled, because when I get in this anxious state I become numb. Worries consume me and I lose the ability to feel. The worst is that I just don't enjoy anything. I try doing the things that usually make me happy--listening to records, reading, playing guitar--but I feel like I'm just going through the motions, or like I'm watching a movie of someone else doing these things. That's probably why there aren't any notes about what I've been listening to in this entry... I've been listening to plenty of music because I'm always listening to music, but I haven't been feeling music in the way that I want to. So, sorry to leave off on such a depressing note, but that's it for now. Hopefully I'll have some better news next time.
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