Skip to content
It’s been a crazy week and I haven’t squeezed in much time for record-listening, so excuse me if I don’t touch too much on music and records this time. I’m sure I’ll be back at that soon enough. I wanted to start this week by pouring one out for a couple of institutions that have been important to me in my punk journey.
The first one might not mean much to anyone outside central North Carolina, but last week Chaz announced he’d be closing Bull City Records after 20 years in business in Durham (Raleigh’s neighboring city). I first walked into Chaz’s shop in its original location next door to Cosmic Cantina (what a combo!) shortly after it opened. I still remember I found an original pressing of the Hypnotics’ Indoor Fiends that day, and Chaz had a customer for life. Of course I got to talking with Chaz—as everyone does... he’s the nicest guy ever—and he’s been a good friend ever since. Alongside being a top-notch record dealer, Chaz has also made huge contributions to the scene, most importantly helping make live gigs happen. After he had a few bands play in the shop’s original location, he commandeered a vacant room across the hall and started hosting gigs there, and that’s the room where I booked my first show and where I played my first ever gig with my first band, Cross Laws. The Marked Men even played a legendary gig in that spot. That probably marked the end, sadly, as the space was on the second floor and when the proprietors of the shop below came in the next morning, they found most of their ceiling had fallen in. Undeterred, Chaz helped spearhead a new DIY spot called Bull City HQ that went on for several incredible years and hosted a ton of great gigs, including Cross Laws’ last show. It was always clear to me that Chaz was doing it all for the right reasons, the right way, and committed to making things happen with zero fuss, controversy, or pretension. I think Durham is losing something super important. As with just about every other city, there are now a bunch of small shops in the town (in fact, Chaz’s current / final location is directly across the street from Carolina Soul), but Chaz wasn’t a side hustler or a Johnny-come-lately… he’s hard-working, knows his shit, and ran a proper fucking record shop. His shop will be missed, but I hope I still get to see Chaz from time to time… maybe he’ll even have more time to go to gigs without having to man the shop all the time.
The other institution I wanted to mention is dear to a lot of Sorry Staters’ hearts, and that’s What Are You Listening To?, the weekly livestream show on Analog Attack’s YouTube channel. Jeff and I have been guests on the show several times, and the show had become a big part of my world. The host, Mike, is very engaged with the little corner of the music / punk scene Sorry State focuses on, to where I wondered if I should reach out about sponsoring or bankrolling the show. So many of Sorry State’s customers appeared as guests, and they often showed records they bought from us, which was always awesome to see. There was a spell after Angela left and before we hired Trevor when I was packing a pretty sizable portion of our regular mail order, and invariably I’d end up working late on Friday night, watching WAYLT? as I packed orders. I always enjoyed popping into the live chat to give stock and order updates. It felt like WAYLT? was a kind of public square where a bunch of people from our scene gathered, communicated, discussed, etc. There’s a lot of record talk to be found on YouTube and other forms of social media, but few feel as intimate and as real as WAYLT?. Mike mentioned there’s a possibility it could come back in the future, and I hope it does.
A few days after he announced WAYLT?_’s end, Mike posted a video talking about why he stopped the show, and his main reason was that (I’m paraphrasing here) the grind of running the show and trying to sustain and improve it had become triggering to his depression and anxiety. And while it’s a little outside “our” scene, I couldn’t help think about Bo from the Hardlore_ YouTube channel, who sadly took his own life last week. Especially with Bo, someone like me looks at him and thinks he has it all. Not only was he a very successful YouTuber, but he was also in a big-name band and apparently had a near-limitless supply of vintage metal and hardcore t-shirts. What a life, right?
But how things look from the outside are not always how they feel from the inside. I was thinking about this a lot this weekend as we ran our sale. I hesitate to put this out there because I worry it makes me seem ungrateful, but as successful as the sale was, it stirred up a lot of tough feelings. My anxiety was through the roof as I drafted the newsletter and tried to find the right words to tell you all what was going on and ask for your help. There were constant nagging voices in my head telling me it’s shameful to have to ask for help, that a successful business would be profitable enough that we’d be able to cover this expense easily, and that I’m a failure for not managing my / Sorry State’s finances well enough to make it all work. I worried I’d be mocked or otherwise attacked, but of course none of that happened. Unfortunately, once I put out the word and sales started coming through, the negative voices still didn’t stop. Every so often I’d check how sales were going, but rather than being pleased we were progressing toward our goal or that people cared enough to help us out, the negative voices found all kinds of crazy shit to shout back at me. I’d think, what if the loan doesn’t go through and we can’t buy the shop and people are pissed because they donated for no reason? What do I owe all the people who contributed? What if the economy tanks or records suddenly become uncool and Sorry State has to close in a few years? My mind immediately reframed all the love people were showing as debts and obligations. All weekend I’d check my phone, see more sales had come through, and rather than smiling, I would feel my stomach clench and bile force its way into my throat.
It got so bad that the other day I actually googled, “why do I feel bad when good things happen?” After scrolling past the AI-generated slop that was telling me god-knows-what, I read what some credible sources had to say, and it made me feel better. I think, for me at least, these kinds of reactions are grounded in a low sense of self-worth. There’s something in me that constantly tells me I’m not worthy of people’s love, affection, and support. When people express these things to me, I feel guilty because I don’t think I deserve them. And any good thing that happens, my brain will reframe as either a backhanded dig or some kind of crisis in the making. It sucks. But it seems like exactly the type of habit or pattern that therapeutic approaches like CBT counteract. So I’ve been reaching into my psychological toolkit and revisiting some old strategies. I’ve also been trying to be more social and connect with friends. (I’ve been very isolated this winter.) The other night I went out for a beer with some buddies, and that felt great. Tonight is the Indikator B show in Raleigh, and then Saturday is a birthday party for one of my closest friends. As the weather warms, hopefully my social calendar will stay busy and I’ll resist the urge to feel overwhelmed by it.
Ending things on a completely different note, another social thing I did this weekend was attend Fire Fest in Star, North Carolina. My wife Jet is a potter, and after taking a long break from clay to focus on her teaching career, over the past few years she’s really immersed herself in the pottery world, which is its own vibrant subculture with many parallels to the punk scene. Last week she was at the national ceramics conference in Detroit, and this weekend was a big gathering of North Carolina pottery folks at Fire Fest, which happens at Starworks, a huge pottery compound in Star, just near the famous North Carolina pottery town of Seagrove.
The main event of Fire Fest is the opening of the petal kiln. Each year they invite a visiting artist to make a large sculpture they fire in this kiln. They work all week feeding the fire with wood and getting it up to temperature, then at nightfall on Saturday, they dramatically open the kiln when it’s at its hottest, revealing a glowing, white-hot sculpture. While the kiln is open, they pelt the sculpture with wood ash and other combustibles, which creates little explosions and causes interesting atmospheric effects that change the color and texture of the sculpture’s surface. It’s pretty amazing! I think someone said over 800 people were there for the kiln opening. It was a totally DIY affair, and since a lot of potters are weirdos of the type you’d see at a punk gig, it felt like we were at a show. It felt a lot like the huge outdoor shows they have under the I95 bridge in Richmond. Only instead of watching a band, we were all staring at this burning sculpture.
While the kiln opening is the main event, they have an entire weekend of activities at Fire Fest, with demonstrations, artist talks, and lots of other things to do. While most of them have to do with ceramics, they also did an iron pour on Saturday. When we arrived in the afternoon, the ironworkers were using hammers to break apart old iron things like cookware and fencing. Then they got their own fire going and melted the scrap into molten metal. Once they were ready to pour the iron, they set up a PA system and started blasting fire-themed heavy metal (get it?) songs while the workers toiled away. When the first cauldron of liquid iron came out, they queued up “Iron Man” as the workers poured the molten metal into molds for sculptures and tiles. Cheesy, but it hit. The event was small enough that I could get very close to the action, and I found it totally hypnotic to stare into the cauldron of bubbling liquid metal.
Alright, that’s all for this week. Thanks again for your help everyone! We’ll be back at it next week.