Like a mountain rolling downhill...

This space should be filled with me talking about the first Blank Dogs show, but instead I ended up staying in listening to the recordings and trying to get the train back on the tracks.  Regardless, you should listen to them, and find their records.  It took me a little while to realize how good they are.  Don't make that same mistake.  Or the mistake I made of missing the show.

Primitive music will one day require primitive reactions.

Side rant:  Shows are social events and everyone wants a good story and maybe even a good lay out of one, but what the fuck is up with the total lack of class and respect in so many Ritalin-addled, reject, cool kid crowds lately?  I mean, I'm happy to see my friends and catch up, but it's a show.  A show that musicians are playing.  Musicians that you allegedly like.  So why not pay attention?  You can hear where the noise wall is erected, the amorphous line where the audience has tuned out and become completely engrossed in themselves.  Punk rock shows, whatever, throw people through a wall, for all I care.  But at an obviously quiet, intimate performance, shut the fuck up or go outside.  Julie Doiron was all but inaudible last night, which is a goddamn shame, because all the kids who were "there for the music" totally should have been into her, especially considering she's part of the Mt. Eerie line-up on "Lost Wisdom."  Todd P actually had to get up on stage and tell people to quiet down because Julie was way too polite, and once it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop, she launched into one of the most moving and beautiful songs of the whole night.

It doesn't make sense, because this music isn't that "hip," so why are people showing up just to be seen and heard?  It's Williamsburg, there's plenty of other street corners you can stand on with your incandescent retro threads and purposefully poorly groomed hair growth.  Don't turn the venue into the ball pit, because there's actual value lost from the bullshit antics.  The void incarnate that is nearly every individual painting their pants on and "being" for a living should remain in the quarantine and stop the blight before it gets too serious.

Because it's not cool when these kids are either willfully destructive or retardedly unaware with their actions.  Todd P is the backbone of cheap, quality shows, and if he wasn't doing what he's doing (for the love of it, mind you) there wouldn't be any scene.  So when he asks people to respect the neighborhood and be mindful of the neighbors, it's infuriating when two All-American Rejects rejects more or less spit in the face of the request and do something stupid, like burn a showpaper.  Not only are you destroying a labor of love that keeps your dumb asses informed, you're also destroying any goodwill that was formed.  You really have to wait for Todd to come over and tell you that that shit doesn't fly?  You, with the atrocious thrift gold leather jacket and the horrendous mustache that screams "I have no personality to speak of and I'd give my right hand to get laid if it didn't fuck me over for good?"  Or you, the chubby sidekick unaware that your bushy facial weeds are anything but appealing and that American Apparel makes XL purple hoodies with the intent of selling to the not-small masses like yourself, the perennial not-a-fan music fan who works at a record store because it's easier than dieting and just as mindless?

I'm usually pretty good at tuning out, but sometimes, when I spend a little too much time as a stranger among us, I can't wait to get back to Prospect Heights and wait for the fences to go up around that wasteland.  Hope I don't see you at Academy anytime soon, asshole.

On "Groovy Hate Fuck" and the blueprint for western decline...

It's funny that Pussy Galore blew up (as in dissolved) and then The Message got out. Black Flag's "Damaged" is obviously the cornerstone for a hardcore of nihilism (PG was wont to cover their fair share of the Rollins era) but Jon Spencer and Julia Cafritz kept that rolling. Then came the inevitable break-up, the establishment of new projects that continued on to great renown (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Free Kitten), and the recognition of what was hiding in plain sight all along. I feel like so much nihilistic, dystopian rock music really speaks to the idea of prophecy in the American voice as outlined by Greil Marcus in "The Shape of Things to Come." So many of these musicians are far from outcasts, often integrated into broader culture but also the seedy underbelly. Perhaps it's a more holistic awareness combined with a certain cynicism that leads to this kind of sound; if you could take what you saw and extrapolated it out twenty years down the line, how would you feel?

All this comes from a really great interview of Julia Cafritz, relevant due to Free Kitten's recent resurrection. If you were wondering the new album "Inherit" is worth checking out, especially since it's a major shift stylistically. Cafritz admits that sonically it takes a turn for the worse, especially poignant considering she says "Free Kitten is an opportunity to express more dark as we live lightly." Life and art are imitable, but they're at their best when in discourse with each other.

What caught my eye, though, was the lead quote, which turned out to be the most poignant segment of the entire interview. Some of that old-fashioned prophesying is still at work, both in Free Kitten and Cafritz's life, continuous with a lot of ideas that came out in the days after punk got broken. What's it like to see a future and then watch it dissolve? What takes its place? Cafritz has this to say, and I'm still thinking on it:

New York was going to get taller, there would be sex clubs in buildings that catered to hospital fetishes. And there would be freeze-dried drinks at bars. In reality, because of 9/11, it's a run for comfort. It's the proliferation of cupcake shops. New York has tried to recast itself to look like the rest of America. Instead of rising like a phoenix, it retreated into itself.