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All Things to All People Vol. 8
I mentioned in my last blog post that Terminal Escape wrote about Blackball, and then whattayaknow, a week or so later they actually write about one of my old bands, Infección. Reading other people's reviews / assessments of your work is always weird, but Robert's description of Infección probably jibes least with my perspective as a member of the band than anything I've ever read about one of my musical projects. Usually when I read reviews of my bands it's clear that the writer has listened to it at most once or twice and consequently it's easy to dismiss whatever they say, but I don't know if that's the case here. Of course I'm honored that my guitar would be described as D. Boon-ish... actually one of my big goals with Infección was to play with minimal distortion and have a brighter, trebly-er guitar sound that made much more substantial use of the lighter strings. However, I have to take issue with the fact that he describes us as so weird. Maybe the recording came out weird (I did it myself and I have basically no knowledge of home recording), but I feel like Infección is probably the most straightforward, pop-oriented band I've ever been in.
Infección had two main inspirations: the Shitty Limits and Sudor. After driving the Shitty Limits on their final US tour I had a moment of realization that the personal and musical issues that hampered the band I was playing in at the time, Devour, weren't a necessary part of being in a band, so when I got back from that tour I left Devour with the idea of starting a new band that was a lot more fun. Bobby Michaud was obviously my #1 pick for drummer (and he remains my favorite punk drummer), and I had spoken briefly with David about him singing in a Spanish-language band a few months earlier so I hit him up with the idea. If memory serves, Rich from Whatever Brains either heard some of my home-recorded songs or heard us practice and offered to join on bass, which infinitely more melodic sophistication to my simple, straightforward punk songs.
I remember when we played our first house show there was already a buzz about us. Aside from maybe Crossed Eyes, there hadn't been a Raleigh band that came from the hardcore scene but had melodic elements. I think that people were already growing sick of the retro hardcore thing and we got an immediate positive response, and people continued to react really positively every time we played. While the recording on the tape certainly could have been better, I felt like that initial batch of songs pretty much accomplished the goal I set out for, which was to merge the riff-y, straightforward, classic punk style of Shitty Limits with the energy and urgency of Sudor's early releases.
Unfortunately the band didn't really progress much beyond that. We wrote two additional songs that didn't appear on the demo, and each served to expand our palette. One song was a short, blisteringly fast song built around a slightly discordant series of notes delivered in rapid-fire triplets. The second was a mid-paced, new-wave-influenced song that was, by far, the most pop thing we did. Once I figured out that Rich would add richly melodic basslines to whatever I did, I pushed myself to write even simpler guitar parts, making the guitar hold down the rhythm (which is usually what the bass does) and freeing up the bass to carry the big melodies. It's a strategy employed by a lot of my all-time favorite bands (most importantly, Wire), and I was really pleased to be (an admittedly small) part of a song I thought was really great. However, as we were doing a new recording session with Will from Whatever Brains (with an eye toward possible release as a 7" or 12"), Bobby announced that he was moving to Atlanta, and unfortunately Infección never practiced or played live again. As a matter of fact, we didn't even finish mixing that session.
I might have mentioned this in some respect before, but lately I've been having a lot of meta-type thoughts about punk. Here in Raleigh we're in the midst of a bit of a venue crisis. There are a couple of bars that are supportive of the punk scene, and I am eternally grateful to them for letting punk happen in their respective establishments. However, to me bars simply are not punk, particularly since nearly every bar in this area (with the only exception, I believe, being the Nightlight in Chapel Hill) is either unwilling or unable to do all ages shows.
When I started the record store I hoped that it would be a shot in the arm that would take the punk scene in Raleigh (and, more broadly, in North Carolina) to a new level, but that hasn't really happened. In fact, nearly the opposite has been the case; while there are still a ton of great bands in the area, there have been barely any DIY punk shows to speak of in the past year or more. Touring punk bands now routinely hit up Greensboro before Raleigh, and I think we've pretty much lost our reputation for the wild explosions of energy that shows here were doing the mid- to late-00s. I think that part of the reason the store hasn't sparked some kind of NC punk renaissance is that, particularly in the era of downloadable music, a record store really only services a small corner of the punk scene.
It's always been the case that people are attracted to punk for different reasons, and the different priorities and values of these camps causes a lot of the conflict in punk. Some people are attracted to punk because of fashion; people on the outside of this group might call them poseurs, while people inside this group wonder why everyone else doesn't dress punk. Some people are attracted to punk because of its association with radical politics, and they grow frustrated at other punks' political apathy and/or inertia. And then there are the record nerds, which I realize, retrospectively, is the group I identify with. We are the keepers of the flame, the ones who curate and preserve the artifactual evidence of punk's existence. it's a noble pursuit in the abstract and my little group often grows frustrated with people who don't "support the scene" by buying stuff. However, the flip side of this perspective / attitude is that punk can become just another market, another set of goods and services to buy. When I opened the store I thought it would be a meeting / hangout space for the punks, but really it's just that for a certain kind of punk: the kind who both likes and is able to buy stuff. I certainly don't want that to be the case, but when a space is billed primarily as a store I can see how it would seem weird to go there without the intention of buying something.
So, in light of all this thought I've been trying to wrap my mind around how a DIY venue might be possible. Would this be the mythical meeting place that brings the punk scene together? Would it be something else for people to complain about, take advantage of, and eventually take for granted? Would it be more trouble than its worth? Would it spell my final and complete financial ruin? I have no answers to any of these questions... in fact, they strike me as the kinds of questions you can't answer without the requisite experience.
All Things to All People Vol. 7
So, last week was the first time I've missed my weekly blogging appointment. I wish I had a really interesting excuse, but unfortunately it was just the weight of the normal grind, which is amplified at this time of year because the store is really, really busy (which is a good thing!) and I also have to finish up my end-of-term stuff and grade what seems like a million student papers. I've always found it quite annoying that the two busiest times of year at the store--the Christmas holidays and Record Store Day--coincide almost perfectly with the end of our fall and spring semesters, which means that for a solid 2-3 weeks I am working almost literally around the clock, with nary a moment to myself to collect my thoughts. Maybe this is a pretty universal human calendar though? It seems like just about every culture has some sort of winter festival, and I'd imagine that most of those cultures also attempt to squeeze one last bit of productivity out of everyone before they let them chill out for a little while and take a break. Regardless of where this schedule comes from, thankfully I'm mostly over the hump now. Grades have been submitted and the mail order has slowed down now that there is little hope of packages arriving before Christmas, and now we hopefully just have a few more really busy shopping days at the store before I can take a break for a couple of days. Then, of course, I start preparing my spring courses.
Lately I've really been feeling this new recording that Wisconsin's Failed Mutation posted to their BandCamp. Astute readers will recognize that Failed Mutation already have a few releases under their belt, including a demo tape (later pressed to 7") and a cassingle on Not Normal, but this new material is pretty next level. Eric, who plays drums in Tenement, plays guitar in Failed Mutation and if you've ever gotten into a conversation with him you probably realize what a USHC head he is. Well, those influences shine in Failed Mutation, but there's a certain something that not a lot of bands these days have. In a word, perhaps I'd call it quirkiness... the songs are built around all of these super tight little tempo and timing changes, giving it a feel that's kind of like a tougher, sped-up version of early Wire (and hence, by extension, it also has shades of early Minutemen and Minor Threat as well)... all of those whiplash changes also wouldn't make a Gauze comparison out of place, either, though the vibe of Failed Mutation is very different. Oh, and those double-tracked vocals sound totally awesome as well! Last I heard there weren't any plans for a physical release of this material, but I really hope that changes because I've been wearing out this BandCamp player.
Logic Problem live... somewhere
The other day I was texting back and forth with Nick G≠ because some old Logic Problem practice recordings had popped up on shuffle. We got to talking about how much time we used to invest in music back then, and that in turn got me thinking about how life seems so much more accelerated nowadays. For the roughly two years when Devour and Logic Problem were going strong I generally did 2 2-3 hour practices per week with Devour, and Logic Problem would usually practice all day on Saturday or Sunday, sometimes for eight hours or more (with a meal break in the middle). I also lived 45 minutes from the practice space, so add in one and a half hours of commuting to each of those practices. You would think that was enough, but I also put tons of work into the bands outside of actual rehearsals. I had a little handheld Tascam recorder that I would put in the corner of the room during practice, and as soon as I got home from practice I would edit these tapes down, comparing different takes of songs we were working on and saving any of them that had any value whatsoever. That's in addition to all of the time I spent booking shows, working on artwork, writing songs at home, and of course just daydreaming about the bands.
Now, it's not hard to imagine that I had the energy to do all that. After all, the scene was positively buzzing with energy. There were good shows every weekend, other bands that were all pushing each other to get better and better, and just a general sense of energy and excitement. What I really wonder is how I found time for anything else? When did I work? When did I sleep? I mean, I probably did far less of those things than I do nowadays, but right now No Love has one 2-3 hour practice session per week and it's tough to make it to that, much less actually play guitar and/or write songs outside of practice. Nick used to drive 3+ hours each way to every single Logic Problem practice, but he told me he often can't find the energy to drive 20 minutes to his practice space in Atlanta.
Maybe all of this is just part of getting older. Maybe I just have different priorities... god knows I do plenty of work, but now it's putting 50-80 hours per week in at Sorry State, which leaves very little time for working on bands. I can't help but crave that sense of excitement and energy that came with the explosion of hardcore in the late 00s, though, as well as the different kind of gratification that comes from pouring so much of your energy into artistic expression rather than the less creative (but still really stimulating!) life of running a business.
http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-ive-fallen-out-of-love-with-shopping-for-vinyl-6378229
I've seen the above article from the LA Weekly pop up in my Facebook feed a few times over the past week, and I have to admit that it's really been getting my goat. People love speculating about the economics of the music industry, and I have to say that from my perspective as the owner of a record store most people are either completely wrong or have ridiculously unrealistic expectations.
The gist of the above article is, "I used to buy vinyl for really cheap, now it's really expensive!" I hear this attitude a lot around the store, and there are a few things that bother me about it. First of all, it seems a very close argumentative cousin to the "I only like their early stuff," cooler-than-thou posturing that I really hate. People love to think that they are the first ones at the party, particularly if it means denigrating the experience of the people who arrived later. Another thing that bothers me are that these very same people who complain about prices not being the same as they were 10, 20, or however many years ago are often the very same people who brag about selling collectible records for exorbitant amounts of money. You can't have it both ways, you know? Either you are the person who values this thing that no one else values (and hence it has no real monetary value), or you're the digger who finds the diamond in the rough that other people overlooked. It doesn't make sense to acknowledge that records are worth a lot of money now, but also to expect to routinely find them for far, far below their market value without any work.
If you really are a bargain hunter there are tons of places you could be putting your attention. The market for hip-hop and dance 12" singles is non-existent and you can buy them for pennies. The same goes for a lot of 90s punk, though the Destroy All Art compilation may change that. There are still tons of cheap thrills to be had out there for the person who is willing to invest the time.
The other day Joe from Don Giovanni stopped by the store and we had a long talk. He told me that over the past couple of years he's pretty much stopped buying used vinyl and focused all of his attention on buying used CDs. I think that Joe and I are about the same age, and we both got into vinyl not only because of its inherent aesthetic qualities (bigger artwork, etc.), but also because in the 90s new LPs were about 30% cheaper than new CDs. Nowadays the ratio is the opposite in the used market; even relatively common LPs are quite expensive, while used CDs are dirt cheap. Sure, you occasionally hear about "collectible CDs" (just like there were plenty of collectible records back in the 90s), but in general you can still walk into a used CD store and get piles of GREAT music for a fraction of the cost you'd pay for vinyl. Of course you don't get the coolness factor that comes along with vinyl, but it's all about the music, right?
Now, I'm not going to start buying CDs again any time soon (I'm kind of proud of the fact that the only CDs I own are the Fall's Peel Sessions box set and Judgement's Just Be), but it strikes me that if people really were interested in music being easily available on a cheap physical format, there should be a lot more CDs in punk. The fact that there aren't is a signal to me that, for most people, the physical format only has value as a collectors item, and not as "media," i.e. as a way of encoding or transporting information.
Speaking of physical formats, there has been an interesting thread on Viva La Vinyl over the past few days about "The Death of the DIY Distro." The thread was prompted by Yannick at Feral Ward announcing that Feral Ward would be shutting down its distro and continuing only as a label. There's a lot of interesting information in that thread (and I stepped out of my usual lurker mode to write a few things, since I feel like I have some expertise on the matter), but one interesting thing someone said in that thread was that "cassettes are the new 7"."
This makes total sense to me because cassettes are really perfectly suited to the current economic state of punk. The key difference here is the way that cassettes are manufactured, which is very different from the way that vinyl is manufactured. Vinyl is all about economies of scale, because most of the costs are in setup. In order to make a vinyl record, you have to have a lacquer master cut, then there's a complex process of using that lacquer to manufacture metal parts that actually stamp the grooves of the record into a chunk of raw vinyl. For my last LP release, the Whatever Brains' 4th LP, this part of the process (lacquer mastering and electroplating) cost $650. In addition to those costs, each pressed record cost $1.35 each (printing jackets, insert, labels, download cards, etc., are of course additional costs). If you're pressing 2,000 copies that $650 is spread across them, meaning a setup cost of $0.33 per record. However, we only pressed 300 copies of the Whatever Brains LP (which is almost certainly the maximum number we can sell), yet the $650 setup cost is the same, which means setup cost $2.17 per record. Which means we paid $3.52 for each record before the jacket, inserts, etc. You can see why small-run vinyl is so expensive.
Cassettes, on the other hand, are essentially manufactured in the same way that you dub tapes on your home cassette deck, only on larger machines that make several cassettes at a time at a higher speed and with better fidelity. Thus, there are essentially no setup costs with cassettes aside from the nominal charge for creating the master copy (which was less than $10 for my last cassette release), and consequently 50 vs 100 vs 500 cassettes have essentially the same manufacturing costs per unit. This style of manufacturing is perfect for the small-run, boutique market that most of the punk I'm interested in these days exists in.
So, going forward you are likely to see more cassettes on Sorry State and fewer vinyl releases. I would love to only make 150-200 copies of a vinyl release, but doing so would mean we'd have to charge significantly more per copy. While I don't necessarily have a problem charging $8 for a 7" or $18 for an LP, it's tough to find bands who would be willing to have their releases cost so much more than other bands' releases. However, I can't simply going on pretending that I live in a 1,000-copy pressing world when, in reality, I live in a 200-copy pressing world. Someone will be left holding the bill for the gap in those numbers, and as the label owner that person is me.
I'll finish on a lighter note. The great Terminal Escape blog just posted the Blackball promo tape this week, saying some really nice things about it:
http://terminalescape.blogspot.com/2015/12/blackball.html?m=1
These three tracks are a promo for a 6-song 7" to be released on Sorry State. Test pressings have been approved and they sound awesome, so if all goes well you can expect that out in January. In the meantime, keep rockin' these three tracks.
All Things to All People Vol. 6
I hate to complain about anything having to do with Sorry State, but it's shaping up that this blog is the place to do that, so here's another one. One big part of my job as the owner of this whole enterprise is what is euphemistically referred to as "customer service." Let me start by saying, 99.9% of the time the customer is always right, and customers for a punk business like ours are generally way more forgiving than they actually need to be. Every once in a while we do get a punisher (though that is usually by other channels like eBay or Discogs), but it almost doesn't even matter what the customer's attitude is... apologizing for mistakes (mine or others') is emotionally exhausting. Things go wrong... packages get damaged or lost, orders get mis-filled, and records are defective, and as the customer service person for Sorry State I'm the one who has to deal with that. And mostly it means eating shit over and over and apologizing for said mistakes. I guess that I'm a perfectionist, because every time we get an email or a phone call saying that a mistake has happened (even if it wasn't precisely our mistake), it feels like a punch in the gut. All in all it's a relatively small part of my job because we don't make all that many mistakes, but it really makes me sympathize with customer service reps whose entire job is to be (at best) complained at and (at worst) yelled at and berated all day long. Clearly I would not be well-suited to such a profession.
So, this week I also wanted to talk a little bit about how I listen to music. The other day I decided to put a little sofa in my office / record room at home and it sits right across from my main stereo setup (the picture you see above is the view from said sofa). Every time I make a slight change to my stereo setup it always prompts me to spend a little more time in front of the stereo, which I've been doing quite a bit lately. This is, by far, my favorite way to listen to music, but unfortunately I don't get to spend nearly as much time here as I would like.
In my life, the place I've probably spent the most time listening to music is the car. Really, the car is probably where I first fell in love with music. I've also driven a lot in my life... when I think about how many miles I've put on each car I've owned, I think that I've driven well over 500,000 miles in my life. Conservatively estimating an average speed of 50 miles per hour, that means I've spent somewhere upwards of 10,000 hours driving, nearly all of it listening to music. My first car had a cassette player and I had a big box of tapes with me at all times, most of them home-dubbed affairs with the kind of combinations that you make when you're a 16-year-old trying to figure out punk in the pre-digital era. I distinctly remember a tape with Screeching Weasel's Boogada Boogada Boogada on one side and Fugazi's In on the Kill Taker on the other, I'm pretty sure with Thee Headcoatees "Ça Plane Pour Moi" single added to the end of whichever album was shorter. My second car had a CD player, so I carried around one of those giant CD booklets that hold something like 180 CDs, and this collection pretty much permanently occupied the car's passenger seat. Since, even after I got my first CD burner, ripping vinyl was still more or less impossible, I listened almost exclusively to full-length albums all the way through, which is something I wonder if kids today really develop a taste for. Nowadays I'm good at ripping vinyl and I have an iPhone, so I have pretty much everything I could ever want right at my fingertips. Frequently this is too much choice and I end up listening to my entire library on shuffle.
I still love listening to music in the car, but I don't take as many long trips as I used to, and now that I've invested a bit of time and money into creating a good home stereo setup I'm increasingly irked by the shortcomings in car listening. Some things are great for the car... mostly things with big melodies, so it would make sense that '77 punk bands provide my favorite road trip music. However, I've really come to notice how much road noise at high speeds obscures the low tones, particularly in heavy music. For instance, I've been listening to Napalm Death's Mentally Murdered EP a lot in the past couple of months, but I haven't even bothered to put that album on my phone because all of my favorite parts of that record--mostly Lee Dorian's vocals and Mick Harris's bass drum work--occupy the lower frequency range and would be completely inaudible in the car.
The other primary location of my music-listening is at the gym. However, listening at the gym has some of the same fidelity problems as the car (since they're always blasting dance music), and more importantly the point of listening to music isn't so much to enjoy the music for its own sake, but rather to distract me from the necessary discomforts of exercise.
So, that brings me to my home setup. I'm perpetually broke, so what I have has evolved very, very slowly, in much the same way my record collection has grown and evolved over many years. I first started making an effort to fine-tune my setup after hanging out with the guy who does electronics work for the used turntables and receivers we carry in the store. He's a big-time audiophile so he has spent, I'm guessing, tens of thousands of dollars on his stereo system. After hearing music on his system my mind was blown... it literally felt like I was in the room with the band. I also could distinctly hear what every instrument was doing. Rather than being smashed together into a big, unified roar, I could hear all of this dynamic interplay between the different instruments, even on records that I thought I knew very well. I asked him for some advice on how to improve my setup, and he suggested upgrading my components one-by-one, starting with the the beginning of the signal chain (i.e. the turntable and cartridge) and working my way toward the end (the speakers).
The first component I upgraded was my turntable. I saved up a bit of money and bought a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon DC with an Ortofon red cartridge. Even with my crummy thrift store receiver and Sony bookshelf speakers I immediately noticed a big difference in sound, namely that sense of separation that I noticed on the audiophile system. The only thing I don't like about it is the fact that you have to lift up the platter and manually move the belt to change between 33 and 45RPM. This probably isn't a big deal to the average mustachioed lover of album-oriented rock, but I have a huge (and, I must say, pretty killer) selection of punk singles, not to mention the fact that the 12" 45 is one of the great formats for hardcore punk. If I had it to do over I might buy a different model of Pro-Ject that has an easier speed-change mechanism (or is compatible with a less expensive speed box, since the only one that works with my table costs $600). Oh, and this also makes it annoy me even more when bands print the wrong speed on their labels. I was just listening to the Mansion LP, which spins at 33, and then I went to listen to the new Power LP. The label says it's a 45 so I picked up the platter and changed it to 45, but then the intro came in and the music was obviously way too fast, so I had to pick up the platter again and change it back to 33. First world problems, I know.
Next, I upgraded my speakers. One Saturday morning I went to an estate sale that was advertising a ton of audiophile gear, as well as a whole heap of classic rock vinyl that would be really good for the store. Despite getting there at like 5AM I was still 3rd in line, which meant that I didn't get to nab a $1000 Marantz turntable at 1/4 the price. However, while all of the other customers at the sale raced to claim the main audio components, I noticed that the big floor speakers hadn't been grabbed. I knew nothing about them, but I figured that if they were part of this guy's setup they must be good. Turns out they're a pair of Vandersteen Model 1Ci's that retail for $1249; I got them for $100.
The next components I upgraded were the receiver and an additional pair of speakers. I haven't really put much research into these, but often when I'm buying someone's record collection (particularly someone who hasn't actually listened to the records in years) they'll throw in their stereo equipment as well. I got a pretty good stack of hard rock and new wave from a guy who told me at length about how much research and effort he'd put into his stereo system (I've since forgotten all of the details), and when I hooked up his old Fisher studio standard receiver and Infinity studio reference monitors they immediately sounded way better than my previous gear. In particular, the bassy, modern sound of the Infinity monitors provided a nice counterpoint to the thinner, airier sound of the Vandersteens, and I feel like this setup lets the combination of power and subtlety that I appreciate in punk really shine through.
Now that I have my system much better-tuned, listening to records is an entirely new experience. I generally listen at a pretty loud volume where I can almost feel the air that the speakers push hitting me in the chest, and there are few things I find more pleasurable than hearing a well-recorded "thwack!" of the snare drum played at precisely the right volume. I also find myself getting completely lost in the subtleties of arrangements. Records I've had for years sound new again. The other day I was listening to "Demystification" by Zounds (a song I must have heard hundreds of times before) and I noticed the subtle Hammond organ in the background during the chorus for the first time. Listening to a first pressing of the Stooges' Fun House is a revelation... it feels like you're sitting on the floor between Scott and Ron Asheton. For an album supposedly recorded completely live, there's actually a good amount of post-production, like the double-tracked drums on "LA Blues." I'd always felt like that song was an afterthought on an otherwise perfect record, but appreciating the song's density and the disorientation between the two drum tracks in the two stereo channels makes the song feel like the darkly psychdelic climax that I'd imagine it was intended to be.
So, reading back over the above section it's a lot more gear-y than I really intended. I am, by no means, implying that you need top-notch gear and original vinyl pressings of records to truly appreciate them. What I was trying to get at was how my listening habits have changed over the years... not so much in what I listen to, but how I listen. When I was a teenager it was all about the hook, about screaming along at the top of my lungs on a late-night drive back from a show in a far-off locale. However, when I listen now it's primarily about the playing... about the subtle nuances that players coax out of their respective instruments and how a bunch of players work together to create a unified sound. It's not necessarily a more sophisticated or a better approach to listening to music, but it's different and, I think, worth noting.
All Things to All People Vol. 5
Well, this blog is (at least) a day late because of all of the madness surrounding Black Friday. I'm pretty sure that the rest of the world thinks that Americans are completely insane, and I'm sure there are also plenty of punks out there who think that punk labels, distros, and stores that participate in it are ethically suspect, or at least have their priorities seriously out of whack. I definitely understand that perspective, but I also have a responsibility to myself and my employees to take advantage of the opportunity that Black Friday presents. Consumer psychology is a weird thing... I wish that it didn't exist and that people made all of their spending choices completely rationally, but that isn't the world we live in. The fact is that, for whatever reason, people's wallets are more open at this time of year, and the significant uptick in sales that we experience during the holidays goes a long way toward making up for the money we lose throughout the rest of the year. As I stated way back in Vol. 1 of this blog, Sorry State is not a money-making enterprise, but I'd really like it if it didn't lose so much of my money. Having Sorry State sustain itself at at least the break-even point would significantly reduce my stress level, alleviate much of the potential for burnout that I run the risk of every day, and allow me to contribute even more to the health of both the North Carolina and national/international punk scenes. If that makes me occasionally come off a bit like a scummy capitalist, then I guess that's something I've grown comfortable dealing with.
That line of thought makes me think of another issue I want to address: advertising in corporate / mainstream media. I remember the first time I experimented with running a Facebook ad. The telltale "sponsored" notice appeared at the top of my post and someone replied saying "sponsored post... gross." That really made me question myself and I didn't run ads on Facebook or other non-punk media for a long time. However, once the store opened and I started trying to reach people outside the punk scene I realized that Facebook was probably my best opportunity for advertising. Particularly this past weekend I've begun to notice lots of other punk labels and distros following suit. While I feel guilty every time Zuckerberg & co. suck money out of the Sorry State bank account, the fact is that Facebook advertising is so effective because punks look at Facebook. I think that Facebook basically sucks, but it's kind of a necessary feature of life in the internet age. I wish the punk scene didn't use social media as its primary means of communication, but unfortunately it does. I still advertise in zines like Maximumrocknroll and Razorcake, but I'm skeptical about how effective these ads really are. Instead, I think of them more as donations to institutions that I want to support.
In a way, the existence of this blog is a stab against punks' (and, indeed, my/Sorry State's) over-reliance on social media. It was born out of an impulse to do something that is mine, and mine alone. I don't have the time, energy, or expertise to effectively distribute a paper publication, but ideally this blog should do something similar by allowing me to write in a forum that isn't shaped by all of the oppressive contexts of social media or even the conventional blogosphere.
By the way, if you're wondering how our Black Friday went, I'd say it went pretty darn well. There were a few titles I ordered that flopped... why I ordered copies of the Goo Goo Dolls' A Boy Named Goo is beyond me (maybe because there's been so much talk about the band on Viva La Vinyl?), but I'm honestly shocked that the double LP of Zombies BBC sessions didn't sell better. We consistently sell new and used copies of Odyssey and Oracle, and a well-packaged, professionally sourced collection of vintage BBC sessions seemed like a no-brainer, but not a lot of people pulled the trigger. You can't win 'em all, I suppose.
For the past few days I've been reading the book Loitering: Collected Essays by Charles D'Ambrosio. It's really been knocking my socks off. Over the past few years I've discovered a passion for reading essays that doesn't show any signs of abating. I think that one of the thing that has made me so eager to read is the joy of discovery... there's so much stuff out there that I haven't come across. Despite having a PhD in literature I'm virtually ignorant of contemporary literature, so I end up getting book recommendations from a mish-mash of sources... articles in magazines like the Atlantic, things friends mention on social media, and even algorithmically generated recommendations like Amazon's related product feature or Goodreads' recommendations. I think that the latter is how I discovered D'Ambrosio, and reading the brilliant introductory essay to this collection gives me a similar sort of thrill as when I hear an exciting record that I've never heard before.
Thinking about my developing passion for the contemporary essay reminds me of a conversation I had late one night with a couple of touring bands who were staying at my house. Someone was asking about all of the descriptions I write for the web site... "do you really like all of the records you write descriptions for?" is probably the most common question I get about Sorry State. My stock answer is that my method when writing descriptions is to try to match the record up with the people who would enjoy that record the most. This requires a kind of psychological transformation wherein I try to get myself in the frame of mind of the person who truly loves this record. If I'm listening to the new release on Beach Impediment or Warthog Speak that requires me to become, in some sense, a perpetually angry, hard-moshing, finger-pointing hardcore kid that I might have been ten or fifteen years ago, but am not anymore. Similarly, when I listen to some new genre-bending experimental release I try to become the person who values originality above all else, who craves the new and the novel. I've become really adept at switching between these different modes, but it's a dangerous game... sometimes I feel like I can't remember what it is that I really love.
Anyway, what I'm getting at here is that one of the beautiful things about art is that is allows you to inhabit, to some degree or another, another person's subjectivity... to see the world through their eyes, to hear through their ears, to notice the things they notice, and to temporarily try on their assumptions, biases, priorities, preferences, and/or grievances as if they were a different set of clothes. The well-written personal essay sparks this process with a depth, intensity, and subtlety that I find endlessly gratifying.
I'll wrap things up with a note about music. I realized after I published my last entry that I'd actually written about Voivod in two consecutive updates. Ooops! In an effort to change gears, I'll talk about one of my other big musical obsessions of this past summer: Bloodbrothers by the Dictators. It's weird how an album that you've heard numerous times in your life can hit you all of a sudden with a completely different kind of impact, and that's exactly what happened with this record. A totally beat-to-shit used copy came in the store and I spun it one day and was just blown away. I've owned this record two or three times in my life, and somehow it always ended up in the sell pile. However, since my obsession with this record blossomed it's hard for me to figure out how I ever could have heard the song above (or, indeed, any of the half dozen other stone cold bangers on this disc) and not acknowledged it as one of the most perfect songs of all time. My only working theory is that the opening track on the record, "Faster and Louder," is kind of a dud... it's not a terrible song, but the hooks don't deliver the same deep gut punch as the stronger tracks like "Baby Let's Twist" and "The Minnesota Strip." Anyway, enjoy the track above... god knows I do.
All Things to All People Vol. 4
HOLY SHIT THERE IS A NEW CAREER SUICIDE SONG! That one really came out of nowhere, and what's even cooler is that it's awesome (not that I expected anything less). Jonah is back on the drums, so it sounds like the earlier stuff since, if I remember correctly, Jonah ended up playing drums on a lot of those recordings anyway. It's hard to convey what an important band Career Suicide were to me in the early 00s. Along with Direct Control, they seem to have been almost wholly responsible for resurrecting true early 80s style hardcore, and I know they preceded DC by quite some time as I vividly remember talking about CS at length the first time I hung out with the Direct Control crew. Anyway, timeless band... can't wait to hear the whole album!
New CCTV song as well! I know nothing about where this came from or what it's intended for... I just happened to come across it on youtube. I have to say I remain 100% into the NWI stuff... I worry that at some point it's totally going to jump the shark and not be cool anymore, but I think we have a ways to go until that happens. In the meantime I'm going to eagerly gobble up everything this scene has to offer.
So I just heard the news that GISM is going to be playing a reunion show in the UK. At first hearing it, this seemed like pretty incredible news. I mean, I love GISM as much as the next guy, and their first two records in particular are some of the most singular and endlessly fascinating objects (both musically and graphically) in the history of punk. However, after about 5 seconds of reflection I realized that I just do not give a fuck about reunion bands anymore. Poison Idea are also playing in Richmond (about 3 hours away from me) next year, and I'm not even if sure if I'll go to that. I remember thinking about driving up to CBGB to see Poison Idea the last time they came out east and I decided not to do it... I have no idea how that show was, but I'm sure I would have thought it was awesome regardless. This time, I feel like the best-case scenario is a competent band playing a well-rehearsed, well-selected set list. And honestly, who cares? Anything that was interesting about Poison Idea or GISM is long gone, and I'd much rather spend my time going to see a band that is making good music right now. Honestly, I'd way rather see a bunch of friends put together a Poison Idea or a GISM cover band as at least then I'd (hopefully) be at a DIY punk show that I actually felt like being at.
Speaking of DIY punk shows, THERE ARE BASICALLY NONE IN RALEIGH RIGHT NOW AND IT SUCKS! My friends and I speculate endlessly about the reasons for this. The dominant theory is that there were a few years where people got lazy about booking all ages gigs and instead just had 18+ and 21+ shows in bars, so there's a whole generation of younger kids who didn't discover the scene, and hence didn't move into shithole houses where they want to have shows. I'm not sure if that's all 100% accurate... maybe it's just that "the kids" find it more gratifying to post on social media and play video games or whatever it is that teenagers do these days rather than listen to punk and participate in the punk scene. And, really, what does the punk scene have to offer them? When I discovered punk it was a way of owning my misfit status, of signaling to the world that I wanted something more than what it seemed on the surface to offer. Nowadays there are probably more efficient ways to accomplish the same social goal without all of the historical, political, and cultural drama of punk. But then again I'm old and terribly out of touch with the kids, so there's a perfectly good chance that I'm extremely off base.
I've never been one to post about my "scores" on message boards, but I do like writing about my scores, so maybe this blog is a good place to collect those thoughts? The pic above is a few things that I have acquired for myself lately. The Zounds and Headcleaners records were just things that I came across semi-cheap online... longtime favorites that it's nice to finally own on vinyl. The other two are things I was kind of chasing after.
Voivod has become something of a big band for me over the past couple of months. I've always liked them, but the older I get the more I find myself listening to metal. I was on a pretty heavy Hellhammer / Celtic Frost binge in the spring and summer, and around this time Voivod really started catching my ear as well. I think that I've owned all of their LPs up to Nothingface at some point or another (some of them multiple times) but always ended up selling them because they never really clicked with me. However, all of a sudden Killing Technology was the only record I wanted to hear (and thankfully an original copy came in to the store this summer and I managed to snag it), and now that I've kind of worn that out Dimension Hatross is sounding even better to me. Really, it's kind of weird that Voivod are even classified as a metal band. Aside from their haircuts and clothing, their songs are short and economical as many hardcore bands, and they've never been shy about acknowledging their big debt to early Die Kreuzen. Anyway, I was stoked to grab a copy of this for a decent price after poking around online looking for one for a couple of months.
The other big score for me is that Human Sufferage 12". This band was from Columbus, Ohio, and they have been something of an enigma for me for a long time. I think that Mike from Direct Control played me this LP 8 or 10 years ago. I remember a beer-soaked night hanging out with him and Musty when Mike told me that this 12" was the only record he had ever bought online in his life. I remember that it ripped, but pretty much everything rips when you're partying, right? Anyway, I always kept an eye out for Human Sufferage's stuff, and a few years ago I happened upon a sealed copy of their 2nd LP, Thank You, Mother Dear at Goner Records in Memphis and immediately snatched it up. (That record is available on youtube here.) Mother Dear is pretty good, but I knew this first 12" was the one I wanted, and the fact that I never even came across mp3s or a youtube video of it made me itch to hear it all the more. Once it finally arrived I was treated to some solid, punky, early 80s USHC that's pretty much just the way I like it. For some reason they remind me a lot of that old California band Anti, or maybe even Sex Drive-era Necros. It's basically sped-up punk... or maybe what came just after that, i.e. bands that were dyed-in-the-wool hardcore bands, but still had a lot of influence from punkier bands like the Angry Samoans. Anyway, it's not the best record of all time or anything, but I've been spinning it constantly, and it's nice to listen to something that's so out of the echo chamber of the internet.
OK, since this is already a day late I'll leave this version here. Lots to do this week grading papers for my teaching job and preparing for Black Friday weekend at the store!
All Things to All People Vol. 3
This past week I gave a little lecture / Q&A for an Intro to the Music Industry course at NC State, the college where I teach. I'd actually done this before; I met the professor because Jeff took the class last semester (not that I think Jeff wants to be part of the "music industry" as such, but hey, you gotta take something, right?), and when he heard Jeff worked at a record store he asked me to come speak. It's a weird thing to do, for a number of reasons. First of all, to say that I'm involved in the "music industry" is pretty laughable. I don't make any portion of my income off of music, I have no connections to people who are in the "music industry," and my pathway to where I actually am is so idiosyncratic that I doubt anyone could learn anything useful from it. I decided to structure my talk around the changing place of physical media in the music industry, so I brought a bunch of Sorry State releases to show to the class and talk about how our approaches to packaging and the way we think about physical media have changed in general since we started. When I gave the talk to Jeff's class it went pretty well, but the talk I gave the other day was pretty wretched. The students clearly didn't give a shit and a couple of them were clearly struggling to stay awake.
Anyway, the topic is interesting to me, probably because rather than actually being a part of the music industry what I am in reality is a hobbyist who has turned the corner into a full-on obsessive. I was telling the students that the word "media" is almost a misnomer nowadays. A medium is an agency or means of doing something; in the case of records, they are a means of playing recorded music. However, with relatively few exceptions people don't really use records as a means of playing music anymore. Instead, records are this weird fetish object... a symbol that stands for something they aren't, whether that's status, fandom, a relationship to a band or a lost childhood... who knows. The point is that few people are buying records because it's the best way to hear the music they want to hear. This makes the record seller's job very difficult, because rather than selling music, what we're selling is whatever it is that generates the record's symbolic value to the person who buys it. That's very difficult to figure out, because it's different for every person and even changes over time. I've often thought that if I worked as hard as I do selling records but sold something else like hardware or plumbing supplies or caskets or fucking vape juice or anything but records I'd probably be a millionaire.
This morning I watched this really cool 1978 documentary about Magazine and the Buzzcocks. I'm sure this documentary is old news to most of you, but I've never really been one for YouTube (I just don't have time for it, really) so I've only just now come across it. Unlike a lot of rips of TV programs this old, this one is top-notch quality, and also captures two of my absolute favorite bands of all time at their absolute peak. A particular highlight is at the end of the documentary where the original Buzzcocks lineup reunites to play "I Can't Control Myself." Being that these two bands are two of my favorites, I've often wondered what would have happened if Devoto had never left the Buzzcocks. The question is particularly interesting as this documentary really highlights the "two sides of the coin" relationship that Pete Shelley and Devoto seem to have. Imagining a band that combined the intellectual heft of Magazine's first three albums with the razor-sharp pop sensibilities of the early Buzzcocks singles is almost too much for me to even contemplate... if such a band had existed, surely they would have inspired world peace a la the ending of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, right?
I've been listening to a lot of Voivod lately. I don't really have anything interesting to say about Voivod other than that they are really, really good, particularly Killing Technology and Dimension Hatross. I've loved Killing Technology for years, but I never really spent much time with Hatross. I just picked up an original, copy, though, and I'm remedying that situation post-haste.
And since Voivod always makes me think of Die Kreuzen, I'll post the above video as well. If you've never watched this before, stop what you're doing and devote your undivided attention to this video right now. These 13 minutes may actually be the peak moment of the entire history of human culture on the planet earth. These men are gods. If anyone wants to start a religion based on early Die Kreuzen HMU.
Sorry this is kind of a short one, but I'll have to end there. My brain is fried this week from too much work, too many record descriptions, and not enough real excitement. Now, I'm off to see Priests and Shopping in Durham... should be a good one!
All Things to All People Vol. 2
I just found out that I will be teaching at 8AM again next semester. I'm pretty upset about it. In my last post I talked a little bit about Sorry State's monetary philosophy. Since I have never taken money from Sorry State, that means that I have to work a full job in addition to running the store, distro, etc. Lately it has become extremely difficult to balance these things. This fall my teaching schedule puts me on campus about 30 hours per week. I could probably deal with that, but I also teach at 8AM, which means that I have to wake up around 6AM, which means that I need to go to bed at like 10PM if I want to get a full night's rest (which, I assure you, becomes more and more important the older you get). Needless to say, that bedtime is not really conducive to the rock and roll lifestyle that I would like to lead, and I've had to miss a ton of great shows this fall because of it. Thankfully my on-campus time will be reduced next semester, but I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to keep waking up before dawn several days per week.
One day I would really love to quit my job and focus full-time on Sorry State, but I have no idea if that will ever be in the cards. I think the main reason I'd like to quit my job is not so much so that I could be a full-time punk (even though that would rule) or certainly not because I think punk owes me a living, but rather because there's so much more that I know that I could do if I had the time and/or the money. Lately I feel like I've really been pushing against the physical limits of how much one person can work, and not only does it suck being exhausted all the time, but more importantly I feel like I'm not doing as well as I could be doing. The store could have more cool records, there could be more cool shows in Raleigh... there's so much more that could be happening if I weren't chained to a desk for such a large portion of my waking hours. But that's life under capitalism, right?
Wriggle photo by Will Butler / Fastcore Photos
The first really good recent band I recall seeing from Greensboro was Holder's Scar. I mentioned this when I talked about their debut EP on To Live a Lie, but I actually avoided checking them out for a while thanks to their kind of tough-sounding name and the fact that they were from Greensboro. When I finally did listen I was pretty blown away by their complex, heavy, and dissonant hardcore. Holder's Scar are great and well worth checking out, but to me they seem almost like a transitional band, with the key members working through their influences and perhaps not quite having found the exact scene that they truly connected with.
Things really started popping off with the next two Greensboro bands I saw, Wriggle and Bad Eric. Whereas Holder's Scar is heavy hardcore with some metal still in the mix (think Neurosis, Rorschach, and that kind of thing but with extra d-beat influences), Wriggle and Bad Eric are pure hardcore bands. Wriggle are nasty and chaotic, with something of the unhinged quality of early Black Flag and prime-era Void, and when you combine that with a distinctly North Carolinian sensibility you get something that reminds me quite a bit of Eye for an Eye-era Corrosion of Conformity. I liked Wriggle's demo tape so much that I did a short run of them on Sorry State, though they're now sold out. I can't wait to hear what's next for them as well, as they played a bunch of new songs on Tuesday that were a touch more melodic and had more interesting guitar/bass interplay inspired by anarcho-punk like Zounds. As for Bad Eric, they're the brainchild of Eric Chubb (who is in all four of the Greensboro bands I'm writing about), and you might have run across them already as they've toured the most out of this group. Like Wriggle, Bad Eric is pure hardcore, but a bit tighter and more straightforward. While the vocals are much tougher, musically they remind me a lot of Direct Control as their riffs tend to be built around similar chord patterns and their songs around similar dynamics and tempo changes.
The latest band to emerge from this group is Menthol, and they're my favorite of the bunch. While Menthol consists of pretty much the same personnel as the aforementioned bands, from what I hear this is guitarist Tyler's brainchild. It makes sense that Menthol would be my favorite because they're definitely the weirdest band of the crew. While they're still hardcore/punk, I think that Menthol reflects the members' increasing connections with the national / global punk scene, in particular midwest bands like Coneheads, Ooze, Bug, and Lumpy & the Dumpers. If Holder's Scar feels like a band still finding their place, Menthol sounds like a band who knows where they fit in the global punk community and realizes precisely what they have to offer to that conversation and culture. They made a few copies of the above recording on cassette for this week's dates, but the plan is to repress some copies on Sorry State so that more people can own this ripper on a physical format.
So, that's a quick little primer on the Greensboro, North Carolina hardcore scene. I'm sure there are probably some errors in there, but I don't know these folks super well... I'm just a particularly interested outside observer. However, it's scenes like this that make me excited about punk, and if you like being excited about punk you should check these bands out.
Speaking of being excited, that's not a feeling that I've had much of lately. In particular, I've been feeling really awkward and isolated when I try to talk to people at shows. I am overworked, exhausted, over-committed, and stressed nearly to the breaking point. All I can seem to think about is work, whether it's my teaching job or trying to run Sorry State, and when I talk to people lately I feel like I'm either complaining/whining or punishing them about the minutiae of all of my various commitments. I feel like I'm just not a fun or interesting person to be around because I don't have the time to do interesting things or even think interesting thoughts... I'm just a task-completing machine. Mostly I have just been trying to avoid actually talking to people, because all I can think about is how jealous I am of their lives. I see people like the Greensboro crew and the Austin crew at the Glue / Strutter show and they're all making killer music, traveling around, and having fun. As for me, it's probably been about a year since I've written a song. I can't remember the last time I picked up my guitar outside of shows and band practice. Sometimes I feel like I can't even remember what fun is. I do have some hope that the spring will be better, but it's been a very difficult fall for me, and it looks like I have at least another month in the weeds before things quiet down at all.
Here's a review of the recent book All Ages: The Rise and Fall of Portland Punk 1977-1981 that I wrote on goodreads:
I loved all of the minutiae in this book. Basically, the author started a kind of anarchist-style collective in Portland during the titular years, and the book contains all kinds of interesting info like meeting minutes, budgets, etc., that provide the kind of granular detail that most punk history books don't. Those parts are great, but basically whenever the author starts talking in generalities I start to hate this book. He has a habit of lapsing into casual sexism and homophobia (a product of his times, I guess) and ranting about incredibly abstract, mostly irrelevant topics for pages on end. The worst was his capsule history / critique of anarchist theory at the very end of the book. Fortunately the book is organized into small sections so if you smell something fishy you can just skip those parts, and even if the writing were completely abysmal (it's not) there's a wealth of primary source info here that's just fascinating. There are a lot of books about the history of punk I'd recommend before this one, but if you want to read everything about this topic (and I do) you'll certainly learn a lot.
I'm pretty into books and I like to see what other punks are reading, so if you're active on Goodreads friend me or whatever here.
That's all for this week! Who knows what I'll write about next week? Only one way to find out I guess!
All Things to All People Vol. 1
So, welcome to my new blog, All Things to All People. I suppose I should start by saying why this blog exists. First of all, as you can probably tell if you follow Sorry State closely, I really like writing. I do a lot of it for Sorry State, but for various reasons (most of them technological), that writing tends to be very tightly structured. Generally, the main things I write are record descriptions and my parts for the newsletter, which are great, but it doesn't leave me much room to write about other things that I care about... like music that we don't have for sale on the site, shows I go to, and other random stuff that might fly through my head at any given time. So, All Things to All People is meant to be kind of a clearing-house for things that I want to say that don't fit elsewhere on the site.
I've had a few blogs in my life, but one of the reasons that I decided to start a new one right now is because I've been thinking about media and punk. I've been running Sorry State for a long time (over a decade now!), but one of the things that I feel like I've never quite gotten a hold of is promotion. Maybe it's from being raised to be self-effacing to a fault, but I am an absolutely terrible hype man. I've been attempting to combat this problem a bit by drumming up some press coverage for my upcoming releases, but by and large this has been an abject failure. I was thinking about why this is the case, and then it occurred to me that Sorry State is its own media outlet. People tell me all the time how much they like the newsletter and I know that a lot of people rely on it to introduce them to new music, much as people used to rely on zines and radio shows back in the old days. Basically, what I'ms saying that even though it isn't billed as such, Sorry State is as much of a zine as it is a record store or a label or a distro, so maybe it's about time I started to get comfortable with that and embrace it.
As for the title, honestly I don't think it's very good and I may end up changing it later. I didn't want to name it after a song because that felt kind of cheesy, and for some reason that phrase popped into my head. I think it's because I really admire people that have strong convictions and stand up for what they believe in. I, however, am not one of those people. I am an adapter, and I feel like I'm always shifting my identity in subtle ways given the demands of a particular situation. Maybe that's because I spend my life traveling between two worlds--punk and academia--but even within punk I sometimes feel like I'm one person with my crusty friends, one person with my nerdy friends, one person with my "garage rock" friends, etc. So, going along with the aversion to hype that I wrote above, the title of this blog is basically in insult to myself for being spineless. Yay me.
I woke up this morning to find out that Dickie Hammond from Leatherface died. I've never been one to write my own little eulogies on Facebook every time a celebrity dies--why does anyone care what I have to say about it?--but Leatherface were a very special band to me at one point in my life. Honestly, I virtually never listen to them anymore. A few months ago I realized that I would skip them every time they came up on shuffle on my phone, so I actually deleted all of their music from the music library on my phone. I think that's probably for the best. I spent so many years drilling Leatherface's songs into my head that maybe it's better that I have a good long break so that I can come back to them later with fresh ears. I feel thankful that I did get to see the band with Dickie on guitar since he was such an important part of the seminal lineup, but honestly those were not the best Leatherface shows I ever saw, mostly because they were lacking Lainey's powerful drumming. Anyway, I didn't know Dickie but his music was very important to me, and I think it's particularly sad to think that the magical way that his playing combined with Frankie Stubbs' will never happen again.
Above is a Leatherface deep cut that I grabbed off of Spotify. I probably could have chosen an even deeper cut given the fact that I have a pretty gnarly Leatherface vinyl collection, but I've always been partial to this song, and it's one of the ones I tend to reach for when I pull out my Leatherface records. Apparently it's a cover, but I've never heard the original.
In happier news, Nick G≠ hipped me to this jam a few days ago and I can't get enough. It's really weird, but I think that if you can get down with Whatever Brains do it probably won't be too much for you. It is more rock & roll, though... parts of it remind me of Destroyer's most Bowie-esque material, but filtered through the dark camp of the Birthday Party and early Roxy Music. Anyway, hopefully I can get some copies for the store or at least one for myself.
Watched about half of this documentary about the Gun Club, but I couldn't make it the whole way through. If you can't get the rights to the music of the band you're covering, why would you proceed with making the documentary? At least this was a bit better than that Replacements documentary, which made me want to stab myself in the eye.
So, this month (October 26 to be precise) saw the 2nd anniversary of our retail store opening in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. I'd completely forgotten about it until I saw someone else mention it on Facebook, but it's a proud moment I guess. I think that I can now safely say that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into when I decided to open the shop, but we renewed our lease for another two years so I guess I'm going to keep at it.
Given the anniversary, now seems a good time to mention something that I think about a lot: money. Every once in a while I'll catch a subtle comment or just get the vibe that people think that I'm all about money and that I do all of this for my own personal gain. That is not the case at all. Especially compared to other distros we might seem really big or "professional," but I assure you that we are 100% DIY. Sorry State is the result of thousands upon thousands of hours of hard work, and there are no trust funds or invisible financial backers behind us. There is also no hope of riches in our future. I have never paid myself a wage or salary from the store or label. I do occasionally snag records for my personal collection, but not nearly as often as you think (maybe 3-4 new records per month plus the occasional bonzer that I can't let go of). I work a full-time job (a pretty poorly paid one, I might add) in addition to running the store and label, which means that every day I wake up at 6AM, work all day, and then after my main job I do work for the store until 7 or 8PM, and I generally spend most of my weekends at the store too. I am perpetually behind on everything, broke, and exhausted. I don't say this to brag or for your pity, but rather to make it clear where your money is going when you buy something from Sorry State.
Sorry State does not exist to make money; Sorry State makes money so that it can continue to exist.
I am a punk. I take punk seriously and it means the world to me. If I ever have to choose between my personal ethics and values (which have been shaped largely by punk) and running Sorry State, then that is the day we close up shop for good. Sorry State has never done anything I consider shady or slimy, and I'm proud of the things we have accomplished and all of the art that we have helped--to some degree or another--to support. I don't wear my politics and values on my sleeve... I don't have a logo in the Crass Records stencil font and I don't go around sloganeering, but I hold my values dear and I will continue to uphold them. I'm not sure if any of this is actually making sense or not, but I just want to put that on the table and (hopefully) make it clear what I'm all about.
I'll leave it there for now. The plan is to make this blog a weekly thing, so look forward to more disconnected musings next week!
Richard Papiercuts
Nick G+ just hipped me to this... like if Brian Ferry was super into the Birthday Party. Freaky but catchy, just like I like it.
New stuff and restocks going out now! #sleep #deadmoon...
New stuff and restocks going out now! #sleep #deadmoon #guidedbyvoices #damagedbug #theeohsees http://ift.tt/1BrlkEu
More used stuff going out always #flamingroovies #buckinghamnicks...
More used stuff going out always #flamingroovies #buckinghamnicks #paganbabies #tokenentry #germanthrash http://ift.tt/1Ss5VIg
Used stuff going out constantly… Bunch of sealed Mose Allison...
Used stuff going out constantly… Bunch of sealed Mose Allison LPs, some nice copies of Beatles classics, Jack Dupree… More on the way too! http://ift.tt/1G4vsjh
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