“Of course you want to do right by other people, but there’s a certain point where you just have to work on yourself.” - Mariel Loveland of Candy Hearts, interviewed by Andy Waterfield
(Photo by Stephen Yang)
Hi, Mariel. For those who aren’t familiar with Candy Hearts, could you catch them up with who you are, and what each of you does?
Candy Hearts is, well, we’re a band obviously. I play guitar and sing, Kris Hayes plays better guitar, Christian Migliorese plays bass and Christina Picciano plays drums. Basically, everyone has their role in the band. I’m the songwriter and overly obsessive van driver (I drove no more than 5 above the speed limit all the way to Georgia); Christina is the “I get stuff done” kind of person and always speaks first when something seems not right or annoying; Kris is the tour dad and the kind of guy who always manages to have packed the stuff I would have left somewhere at a venue in the middle of no where; and Christian’s like that teenage little brother who gets into trouble sometimes but always has an interesting story.
Sounds like a pretty solid dynamic. Do you find that having that mix of temperaments and personalities helps keep things interesting?
I wouldn’t say it keeps things interesting, but it definitely keeps me sane. I can’t speak for the band, but I do know that whenever I have something I want to gossip or complain about, Christina always has my back and when it comes to being nervous and unable to handle whatever a situation might be, Kris is like the ultimate motivational speaker/life coach. Christian is like the perfect person to talk to about boys if only because he feeds me what I want to hear when I want to hear something I want to hear and lays down the truth when it’s really important. Basically, they’re some of the 3 people I feel like I can be not so pleasant around and they wouldn’t really take issue with it. I can be angry, mean or upset and if we argue, 20 minutes later it’s like nothing happened.
That sounds like a useful set of relationships when you’ve got to spend a lot of time in close proximity with one another. What’s your touring schedule been like this past year? Have you got much coming up?
Well, we toured in August down the east coast. We’re playing an unofficial CMJ show in a couple of a days in New York that we’re super excited about. In November we are playing some shows around the Boston area. It’s been kind of hard lately because pretty much the minute our record came out, our van broke. We’re hoping to have it settled by November so we can tour. Then we’ll likely go out in the spring or as soon as the ice and snow and winter driving hazards have calmed down.
Your current full length, Everyone’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy, is also your first through Kind of Like Records. How did you come to be involved with them, and how has it differed from your debut album, Ripped Up Jeans and Silly Dreams?
Actually, it was kind of strange how it came about. Our old bassist, Greg, who contributed a lot to this record, left to pursue his other band These Animals (they’re like cool vintagey indie rock) full time. Christian hopped on board because his band had recently broken up. Apparently his band had been talking to Lisa, who runs Kind of Like. Since we were shopping around for labels, he began talking to her and it just felt right. Even if most of my friends encouraged us to go in a different direction, with Kind of Like I didn’t feel like I was gaining a label — someone to put out our record. I was gaining a best friend, a crucial support system and somewhat of a personal manager/psychologist. She’s just the best!
The record is a lot different than our first to me. Our first was rushed — totally slapped together. I didn’t have a clear direction when I wrote it, nor did I really feel like any of us had a grasp on the way we wanted the record to sound. I was transitioning from being in a real solo-artist type band to something that was really a joint effort and well, a band. That was loud. On this record I feel like we had more of a cohesive idea of what we wanted and we were able to mesh some of our favorite parts of punk and our favorite parts of folk and alternative in a way that made sense together.
It’s always nice when people say awesome things about Lisa. She’s been a huge help every time I’ve needed to pick her brain about something for I Live Sweat, and she does come off as a lovely person.
The way you talk about it, it sounds like you’ve made a neat body swerve of the whole “difficult second album” cliche, and produced something more cohesive than the debut. Does that sound about right?
Yes that sounds about right, though I should note that every time I’m writing an album it really feels like I’m never going to be able to finish it and is always kind of a struggle. I’m sort of in that right now. It’s not pleasant.
A lot of your lyrics are strikingly honest about emotional vulnerability, or seem to be. Is that level of honesty important to you as a songwriter, and is there a downside at all?
All of my songs are more or less true stories. Sometimes the characters are a combination of different people, which leads those I know who might be listening to get a little confused, but it’s important to me to keep a level of honesty with my audience. When I sing a song that isn’t true for me, I feel like I’m cheating people, like I’m lying to myself. The song seems unimportant and just flat — like I’ve conned my friends into believing I deeply care about something that’s meaningless. I can’t work that way. When I draw from the things that I really feel at the core of me, that’s when I develop songs that I can be really be proud of, as afraid or unafraid as I am to put them out there. I also feel like people will respond to them better. I mean, it might be self-centered to say, but if I feel a certain way, someone else must too right?
That strikes me as being the opposite of self-centred, as it appeals to the idea of a common human experience. Expressing emotion through art has always struck me as a sympathetic impulse, for the most part, but that’s just me.
Beyond music, what kinds of things are you interested in?
I guess you’re kind of right. It depends on how you look at it.
Other than music, I really love writing and watching movies. Particularly horror movies! I also like reading, looking at clothes online that I will never be able to afford and going out with my friends.
I lose about two hours a week to staring at t-shirts I can’t justify buying. First world woes, etc.
Do you have any particular ambitions you want to fulfill, as an individual, and as a band member, in the coming year?
That’s a really hard question because I have a lot of goals both personally and band-wise, obviously everyone does. I want to tour europe, I want to make more money, I want to eat better and get more fit and further my career but I think the most important thing for me is to keep doing what I want to do and not get stuck in the rut of doing things that I don’t want to be doing. Sometimes that happens to me. I also really just want to produce work I can be proud of whether it’s in my songs or my writing.
Pretty sure doing what we want to do on our own terms is the holy grail of punk, eh?
I never really thought of it that way, but I guess your right. This whole “doing what I want” thing sort of came about when I was talking to Christian about being unhappy about something and he was just like stop complaining, don’t worry about it and do what you want. Doing what you want is the key to happiness. I think he might be right about that.
I’d sling in a couple of caveats about trying to do right by other people too, but I think I know what you mean.
Of course you want to do right by other people, but there’s a certain point where you just have to work on yourself. You can try to please everyone in the world, but if you’re not happy, does it matter? Plus, you’ll probably get really frustrated because there are always going to be those people you’ll never be able to please.
Oh, bugger pleasing them. As long as I’ve done the right thing by them and myself, I don’t care whether they like it or not.
You mentioned on Twitter recently that certain external factors affect your songwriting. Could you tell us a little bit about that, what kind of effect different factors have, and how you deal with it?
Man, you’re getting personal! External factors affect my songwriting completely. When I wrote most of “Everything’s Amazing” I was in a relatively alright spot, coming off of a summer filled with friends, travel, love and music (that sounds so cheesy, whatever, but that’s all the stuff I like). Now I’m writing our next endeavor and I don’t feel the same way I used to feel. I’m not driving around in cars with my best friends blasting our favorite songs at 3 a.m., instead I’m in a huge city, going home on the subway alone and exhausted. It’s lonelier, it’s angrier and it’s different.
I think a lot of the new themes have to do with more adult things that I’m nervous for my grandmother to hear. I felt like a kid when I wrote our last album, but I don’t anymore, and you experience different things when you grow up. Basically a lot of what I write has to do with my inability to tell some people off (or even tell myself off) or just tell other people how I feel in general. At least when I sing it, I can feel better about not being able to say what I want to say.
You mentioned that you’re nervous about your grandmother hearing certain songs. Have you ever self-censored, or considered self-censoring, to avoid upsetting family or friends?
I certainly have not censored at all but I have been putting off showing these songs to people because I havent censored myself.
You certainly seem to be reflective about the process and context around the way your work is created. Do you feel that’s an important quality?
I kind of beat myself up when I’m creating just about anything. Usually that involves thinking a lot about my work or what helps me make it. It seems like it’s probably a good quality, even if it doesn’t feel that way always.
I reckon that about covers what I wanted to talk about. Anything else you’d like to add?
Hmmm. Nope! Oh, wait. If you’re in the US you should catch us on tour with Man Overboard in Feb! That’s all. Thanks, Andy.
No, thank you, Mariel. Always a pleasure.
Candy Hearts are a New York/New Jersey area alternative band. Their sophomore album ‘Everything’s Amazing & Nobody’s Happy’ is out now on Kind of Like Records.
I recently found myself engaged in a brief but civil exchange with the person running @FRONTmag, the official Twitter account of FRONT magazine. For those who don’t know what FRONT is, feel free to use the search engine of your choice, but be aware that what you find might be classed as ‘Not Safe For Work’.
Anyway, we’ve hosted guest posts discussing FRONT before (like this one, from the wonderful Nathan Stephens-Griffin), but I reckon there’s a lot more to be said on the matter, so I’m inviting anyone with a view on the topic to get in touch with ideas for guest articles. Here are some possible starting points:
- How do you feel about FRONT’s history as a publication, and how that history relates to the way it is currently presented and perceived?
- Do you feel that FRONT has a legitimate contribution to make to punk and hardcore?
- What are your feelings when bands you enjoy work with the magazine?
- How does FRONT as a phenomenon fit into contemporary discourses around pornography? Do you feel that it represents female sexualities in a positive way? Do you feel it represents male sexualities in a positive way?
I’m aware that a lot of these questions could be read as leading questions, but I really do want to present a range of perspectives on this one. I Live Sweat was always intended to spark intelligent and respectful debate and reflection within punk and hardcore (and comics), so if you’ve got an intelligent and respectful view, whichever side you come down on, if indeed you do have a firm view, I’d love to hear from you.
If you’re interested in sharing your thoughts, please get in touch via ilivesweat AT gmail DOT com.
Andy
(Note: If you’ve got an idea for a guest post that has absolutely nothing to do with this, get in touch too! Always looking for new writers.)
“Music and theatre should belong to nobody, everybody.” - Hannah Nicklin compares ‘DIY’ music with ‘DIY’ theatre
(Andy’s note: Much of this relates to UK-specific art subsidies, but much of it doesn’t.)
(Start a Revolution by Tim Etchells. Photo by Hannah Nicklin, taken at the Edgelands event, in Edinburgh, in 2011. Details of the work can be found here.)
“Theatre Belongs to Everybody; Ideas Belong to No One.” - Chris Goode
A few months ago I cried at a gig for the first time. It was Koji/Into it Over it/Starters at the Old Angel in Nottingham. Koji was onstage and he stood and talked to the sticky, buzzing room about community; about what it meant, but also about holding it to account; about knowing when to call people out, and making a community stronger. I cried for two reasons; one, to have someone stand up with a mic and give me permission to be the kind of person who stands up meant the world to me, and two; because the amazing fucking feeling of all those people living and loving and breathing the words and music in that tiny room filled me up. Filled me up in a way that until that point I had mainly associated with theatre.
I make theatre. I have had work in London, Nottingham, York, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Derby, and worked with many other companies besides. I make odd, pervasive performance pieces; stuff you download and walk through a specific city listening to, an audio piece for the top deck of a bus at 1am in London, pick up and play games, installations for swimming pools, or a simple stand-up piece made for a pub back-room where I stand in my protest gear and talk about having a policeman for a father.
When people ask me what kind of theatre I make, I haven’t really got an answer, but I’ve realised recently that if I identify with anything, it’s what I would call ‘DIY’ theatre. In that little sweaty room in Nottingham at the beginning of Autumn, I felt the radical resonances between those two worlds I love; punk and performance - albeit one where I am a maker, and the other an audience member – and since then I have been more and more interested in what both worlds share, and what they can learn from each other.
Daniel Yates of Exeunt Magazine sums up ‘DIY’ really usefully as “small scale, culturally distinctive, alternative producers of experience” (link). That sounds a bit academic-y, but I think at the root of the ethics of DIY is something born of a place and community, and which offers a distinct alternative to the monoculture that thrives on top-down structures, (the mainstream music industry e.g.) and ‘one size fits all’ models of entertainment.
I co-ran an event in Edinburgh this summer called ‘Edgelands’, in it a guy called Tim Crouch talked about monoculture, and the best weapon we have against it; the alternative. Any alternative. All of the alternatives (link). And DIY, in my opinion, is the best alternative there is, because it’s grown and shaped by a certain place to fit and make room for the people that want to live in it. Criticisms of scalability are bollocks in this context; one top down system and thousands of homegrown artefacts meet in the middle.
The quote at the head of this post comes from a booklet given out by theatre-maker Chris Goode (link) at an early version of his most recent show ‘Keep Breathing’. The scratch (work in progress performance) happened in a dusty old factory re-named ‘Stoke Newington International Airport’ (link) where I and many others rehearse and perform for free. Action Hero (link) are a theatre company that got bored of struggling to put their work on in theatres, so made 2 pieces for bars, and another for music venues. Their home is the ‘Milk Bar’ in Bristol, a disused building borrowed from the council where several companies work and support each other’s work. The Forest Fringe (link) has become the highlight of most of the contemporary theatre’s Edinburgh festival, and fills the community-owned not-for-profit Forest Cafe buildings with performers and volunteers, who all work for food and accommodation only. The DIY theatre community is alive, kicking, and as fucking exciting as the music one, but they hardly seem to know of each other’s existence, and that seems odd to me.
There is, though, one massive difference (barrier?) between the two communities; public subsidy. Even if none of the above artists/companies are subsidised directly, the infrastructures in which they move, are.
Here’s the thing about subsidy:
1) Most music can’t get it. (This is wrong, but true)
2) Every work of art is accountable to the establishment (albeit an arms length QUANGO subsidiary thereof).
3) If you’re used to it, and then lose it, you’re mostly fucked.
4) All artists subsidise themselves, anyway. 100% at the beginning, but every single theatre maker I know frequently works for free/expenses only.
Here are some more things about subsidy:
1) Pre-existing and non-commercially driven infrastructure allows both scaling and support for those just starting out.
2) Subsidy that allows a living to be made out of things non-commercially driven allows more people to make art, for more people.
3) It means you don’t have to rely on your audience.
4) It means money begins to seem the only way to start doing things.
A mate of mine told me that a member of the Leicester music community who attended a performance event recently said ‘theatre people never seem to do something unless they can get some money for it’, and though the suggestion made me grumpy to begin with, I’d argue that is true for mid-late career companies or theatre artists. But the thing is, there are a lot more of these in the theatre world than in music. Because the stuff that infrastructure and public subsidy offers is the ability for everyone to stick with making for longer. People over 30, women, non-affluent people, are all either more likely to have caring responsibilities/family priorities, or be lacking the tools/pathways/knowhow to access the world of theatre/music, than those under 30, male, affluent. It’s the difference between scraping by, and breaking even, which makes things possible for people to live and provide by.
Theatre also has industry bodies and members’ organisations like Equity, the ITC, a-n, that actually work for their members’ interests; set living wages and suggested contracts. The kind of support that I have yet to see from majors’ sockpuppets like the MU and their pathetic finger-in-the-hole-of-the-digital-dam obsession. The theatre world is framed art-first. There is a commercial sector that resembles the majors of music, but they occupy completely different territories. Subsidy allows the non-commercial sector to exist without eventually destroying the artists who give their lives to make it.
But music can replicate some of this infrastructure without subsidy. Bandcamp, and before it myspace, has been revolutionary in terms of replacing the distribution functions of the music industry. Why couldn’t we find some form of umbrella organisation for DIY music communities which could easily begin to rival the MU; some kind of mutual or collective/s that drive standards and expectations higher, fight for transparency from Spotify, or better margins from iTunes, whilst also sharing experience/resources? A wiki-infrastructure. For example I know Leicester has the Leicester Music Collective, but how many others are there in other cities, and do they talk? Hold councils accountable for the cultural landscapes they oversee? Could donations help pay a bit of money to allow some people to put in the time to get them to run properly? (That’s another thing subsidy offers; administrators. The jobs that people won’t walk through fire to do, but that are still pretty indispensable in providing scalable infrastructure.)
There’s a criticism of both these theatre and music DIY spaces; that they can be unscalable, insignificant*, hard to find, and incredibly cliquey. The way you solve this is you invite everyone to build their own alternative, and you legitimise alternatives in the first place. What does that mean, in practice? Think about how people find you. Think about how you share skills and spaces. Think about who’s not in the room, and why they might not feel able to be. Like it or not, the fact that those who take public money are required to show how it serves the public makes theatre ask the question (though it’s rarely answered perfectly).
*sub point, fuck ‘significance’ if it always has to mean impactful on a large scale. Give me 50 people whose lives are changed over 500 whose time is filled, any day.
In turn, theatre can learn from DIY music. Theatre is live, or lived, almost by definition. The only way for most theatre to make a living is touring. Although live shows are incredibly important to music, bandcamp, soundcloud, digital downloads in general, have revolutionised audio distribution. Theatre still operates, for the most part, on a distribution system that is hundreds of years old. Big, old, dedicated buildings, weighed down by running and staffing costs. It’s time to leave these, or use them differently (the homeless and brilliant National Theatre of Wales case in point).
Theatre can also learn from the DIY music world that if something isn’t happening where you are, make it happen wherever. Don’t think money-first if you can afford the time. Ask favours of the big fish as well as the little, and pay them back. It could also work together more, share rehearsal space, kit, know-how, contacts, much more widely, efficiently, and regionally. Put theatre in non-theatre buildings, leave behind these palaces, these cathedrals to art. Put it where people are.
They can also learn from the relationship bands have with their audiences. I never heard of anyone getting a theatre company logo tattoo, or proudly, identity define-ingly sticking up show posters in their bedroom. If merch, and sales of records that people can get for free, are the main way you make any money (touring, in the experience of internationally travelled bands I know, rarely breaks even on tickets/fees vs. travel/accomm/expenses) then you have to really drive at your relationship with your fans. Theatre fails at most social media/online/audience stuff because the price of failure is not the end of their existence.
Both of these industries could also work together to show the qualitative value they bring to a community to councils, and show councils there’s more ways to support them than money; all those empty shops, all those empty buildings.
Mostly I would love to see the end of the venue apartheid. Venues where performance, music, installations, craft, libraries, kids’ groups, dance classes, poetry, print making, film screenings, food and drink all happen under one roof. Places like the (recently incredibly fucked over) Forest in Edinburgh, or STK in London.
Because quite frankly, fuck genres. Fuck art form divisions. Let’s talk to, and learn from one another. Let’s work together to fill spaces, places and people with that same burning, beautiful, winded feeling that had me in tears in a music venue last September, and does so frequently in performances. Music and theatre should belong to nobody, everybody.
Hannah Nicklin is a DIY theatre maker and punk/rock/hardcore fan from just outside Leicester in the UK. Aside from Making Things, she is also doing a PhD in how video games are changing theatre. Fun fact: she once declared digital warfare on the government when an otherwise quite rational rant about Torrents was selectively quoted in a Proper Paper. hannahnicklin.com and @hannahnicklin on Twitter.
The magnificent Nothing Nice to Say, co-written by Mitch Clem and Joe Briggs, with art by Mitch Clem. (Larger version)
I intend to write something more substantial about what NN2S has meant to me over the years at some point, but for now I’ll leave this here. Get ye stoked on Karen, and start thy bands!
Andy
“What can you contribute? What will you create that’s new?” Max Stern of Signals Midwest, interviewed by Andy Waterfield
(Andy’s note: I’ve embedded a Bandcamp player below so readers can listen to Latitudes and Longitudes as they read, should they be so inclined. I highly recommend it.)
(Photo by Aaron Feeder)
ILS: Hi, Max. Could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself, Signals Midwest, and what part you play within the band?
Max: My name is Max Stern. I just turned 22 and I live in Cleveland, OH. I play guitar and sing in Signals Midwest. I go to school and work as a graphic designer, but most of my free time is dedicated to writing songs, booking/playing shows, and generally obsessing about music and all things related. I don’t sleep enough.
ILS: Sleep is for the weak, mate. As I understand it, Signals Midwest have just released your second full length, and your first material as a four piece, Latitudes and Longitudes. Do you fancy telling us a bit about that?
Max: We’d been playing as a 3-piece since September of 2008. My friend and I took a cross-country road trip in June of 2010, and we happened to stop in Kansas at the same time that Jeff (guitar) was home visiting his family. We ended up staying out until like 6 in the morning, and had a serious heart to heart about music and Star Wars, and he joined shortly after I got back from my trip. We wrote most of L&L with him and it allowed us to branch out a lot musically. I didn’t have to worry about filling out a sound as much, and it allowed us to do things that we never could have done otherwise. Something that comes to mind specifically is the second half of the song Construction Paper - there’s a section where Jeff and I are doing this crazy, jagged trade-off riff that turns into this big instrumental guitar solo thing. That, amongst many things on the record, would have never happened were we still a trio. The direction of our band changed drastically once he joined, and I’m really happy with it. We definitely went outside of our comfort zone, and I think it’s paying off.
We came home from tour this past August, having just released L&L on CD, and we decided to contact Will from Beartrap PR to do some press work for us. I knew he was part of Tiny Engines, but it didn’t really cross my mind that we could ever be a part of the label - seeing releases from Tigers Jaw, CSTVT, Restorations… It just seemed out of our league. Anyway, we had made a little bit of money on tour (which surprised the hell out of us), and we were all ready to send out like 50 CDs and a check, but the night before I was about to send all that stuff out I got an email from him that said “Hey, hold off on all that stuff. We want to do a vinyl release for this on Tiny Engines!” I got the email at like 1am and barely slept that night. I was a wreck at work the next day, but I was so happy!
So yeah, we’re working out the details right now and shooting for a late November release for the 12” version of L&L. We’re exploring a bunch of cool packaging ideas, and are gonna do some limited edition vinyl colors and screen-printed posters for the pre-order too. It’s all the stuff I’ve wanted to do with a project, but have never had the means to. Chuck, Will, and Jeff have all been so nice and communicative and open about the whole process. It’s really exciting.
(Photo by Donna Baluchi)
ILS: A Serious Heart to Heart About Music and Star Wars needs to be the title of a song, an album, or maybe even a memoir! Also, stoked to hear you’ve had such a good experience working with Beartrap and Tiny Engines. I’ve had a fair bit of dealings with them through I Live Sweat, and they’ve always come across as hard working blokes with a deep and sincere passion for what they do.
I’m also glad you brought up the guitar style on the record. I grew up on Queen records and the Bill and Ted films, so I’ve got a soft spot for bands who aren’t afraid to let shredding guitar parts take centre stage from time to time. There are a lot of great guitarists in punk, but there aren’t too many who give me that sense of power and freedom that comes with a sprawling solo. Matty Pop Chart and D. Boon are obvious examples for me, but who are your favourite guitarists in that regard? What kind of stuff did you grow up with, and do you feel that’s come out in your style now?
Max: I grew up on the Beatles probably more than any other band (thanks Mom & Dad!), and to this day George Harrison is still one of my favorite guitar players. He was the first guitarist I really noticed that could simultaneously play lead and rhythm at the same time, and what always got me was how effortless his riffs sounded, but how complex they actually were. That constant up/down motion while changing certain notes in a chord (see Here Comes the Sun for my favorite example) contributed hugely to my growth as a guitarist, and it’s a style I see echoed in one of my other favorite guitarists, Ted Leo. That combination of percussive picking style, but maintaining a focus on melody, was something I was attracted to very early on. I also had a big Hendrix phase, which led me to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and John Frusciante, who’s also another one of my favorites. All of those players inspired me to maintain chord shapes and find melodies within them, rather than draw a hard line between rhythmic chords and leads. That isn’t all I like to do, but it’s a big part of it.
I guess for my development in playing punk rock, Weezer’s first two records were a huge influence. The sparse use of acoustic guitars coupled with tons of fuzz and solos is something that stuck with me a lot. NoFX was another huge one. When I was 13 or 14, I had a solid month where I played along to all of The Decline every day. In terms of Signals Midwest (and especially for our new record), Matt Embree and Steve Choi from the RX Bandits were a huge influence. Once they got past their ska band days they wrote really progressive, melodic punk records that contained a ton of interesting ideas. Their riffs are poppy and catchy, but super technical, and play off of each other very well without each one directly following the other. There’s also some awesome guitar work coming from modern bands like Good Luck (I know you mentioned Matty Pop Chart earlier. Dude is so good!) and Algernon Cadwallader, but I think in terms of guitar work, RX has influenced me the most.
ILS: On the lyrical side of things, how is that worked out? Do you write lyrics as a band, or as individuals?
Max: There are a few instances where the other guys have told me to tweak things a little bit, but that’s mostly me. I’ll be at the grocery store or driving back from school and I’ll get an idea, text it to myself with some ideas for a chord progression, and sit down with a guitar and a notebook once I get home. I can never write all the lyrics, or all the music, to a song separately - it’s always done with a guitar in one hand and a pen in the other. Lately I’ve been trying to write from other peoples’ perspectives - there are a few songs on L&L like In Tensions that I wrote from the perspective of my grandparents, and I’m trying to further that with our newer songs. John K. Samson (from the Weakerthans) is amazing at putting himself in other peoples’ shoes and writing lyrics from their perspectives and I truly envy his lyrical ability. I think I’ve cross-sectioned my life through music enough to the point where I should probably look for other subjects too. Who knows, though…
ILS: Was the song Family Crest written from your own perspective? What’s that one about? I was just listening to it now, and the references to mental states and dreams piqued my interest.
Max: I wrote the shell of that song in the basement of my girlfriend’s parents’ house in rural Ohio, at about 2 or 3am while everyone else was asleep. I remember whispering the first two lines over and over again because I didn’t want to wake anyone up, but I also didn’t have any sort of writing/recording device and knew I’d just have to remember it later on. It was written at a strange and transitional point in my life - I was in between schools and jobs, in a city and a house I’d never been to before, in a relationship that was still pretty new at that point, and was definitely having a bit of a crisis of conscience. That, and my phone was dead, and I couldn’t find the fucking light switch, so I was just kind of sitting there in the dark freaking out a little bit, wishing I could just go to sleep and slow my brain down for a moment. I suppose the song is about grappling between personal and professional lives, and the forces that drag us towards focusing on one or the other. Trying to make well-thought-out and informed decisions for the future, while not sacrificing personal aspirations; trying to figure out a legitimate way to pursue both, I guess. It was written over two years ago. If I wrote a song about all that now it’d be a lot different - maybe more cynical, more cautious. I’m not really sure - maybe I’ll give it another shot.
(Photo by Christine Froggatte)
ILS: I think that’s something a lot of us have to grapple with, especially within punk/hc, because it’s so common for us to grow up with ideals and aspirations that don’t always find an easy fit in society at large. Sometimes I think it might be a generational thing. Probably a bit naive, but sometimes I feel like our generation are going to take a huge hit for the easy credit the baby boomers enjoyed since the ’80s, and we’re barely even starting out. What do you think?
Max: What’s scary to me is that I think that “huge hit” is starting to affect our generation even now. What you’re talking about plays in hugely to what’s going on right now with Occupy Wall Street (and pretty much every other major US city). Not just in a punk sense, but in a general living and well-being sense. One of my best friends just dropped out of school to go join the occupation up in New York, and he’s got a lot of reasons - debt, student loans, and finding employment after leaving the academic bubble. It feels like we’re being groomed for a system that should have been restructured years ago.
It’s a strange time to be young. Maybe three of my friends know what they’re doing after they graduate college. When people from a more “professional” walk of life ask me what I want to do after I graduate, I just tell them I want to live in a van and play music for the rest of my life. It might not be how I feel in 10 or 20 years, but it certainly avoids conversations I don’t want to have.
ILS: Exactly. I graduated with my BA three years ago, went home to pay off my overdraft, and by the Autumn the economy had gone up the spout. Spent a year in a warehouse, then got my MSc in Social Research, only for the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition Government to cut funding to all social science courses two months later, so now I earn minimum wage in the daytime, and work on I Live Sweat in the evenings, in part to try and distract myself from the huge question mark where my future used to sit.
I used to think the idea of working for half a century was really scary, but, as I see it, it’s a lot scarier to have no idea whether you’ll even be able to do that.
I’m definitely seeing what looks like a huge ground swell in political activism from our generation, on both sides of the Atlantic. Neither the US, nor the United Kingdom, seems to have a genuinely progressive opposition party, with the weight of influence, or the sheer brass neck to stand up to the various powerful financial interests at play.
Max: I can agree - I’m definitely seeing that “ground swell” as you said. Sometimes I feel like focusing on the things that I do (music and design) is downright selfish, and that I should be doing something more productive and on a larger scale. My most political days were at age 12-13, listening almost exclusively to Anti-Flag and spray-painting “Goodbye America” on my Fruit of the Loom T-shirts that my parents bought me from Wal-Mart. I admit that I wasn’t really able to grasp the concept of irony at that point.
There’s a Frank Turner song called Photosynthesis that I’m starting to relate to immensely as I get older and plays in hugely (in my opinion, of course) to this conversation. For anyone who reads this, look up the lyrics. That guy can write the hell out of a song.
ILS: I’m definitely getting to the point where “the latest music fads all pass me by”, but I’d hope that I Live Sweat is testament to my refusal to grow up and shut up.
I dunno. Sometimes it feels like there’s something in our culture that is constantly telling us to sit back, shut up, and choose between the options prescribed to us. I think that’s a lot of the attraction of DIY music and culture, in that it feels genuine, and the transparency and modesty of the means by which it’s produced give it a feel of authenticity that a lot of people are looking for. Who knows?
(Photo by Christine Froggatte)
Max: I mean, people are attracted to DIY music for all kinds of different reasons. What you described is exactly why I was drawn to it, but I think the fact that you used the term “feel of authenticity” is something to be noted. Sometimes it is just a “feel”, and isn’t actually authentic. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are tons of people in DIY music who are kind, genuine, and overall great people, but I also think that there are people on both sides of the fence that don’t really get it. There are bands that posture as DIY, but just use it as a front to gain followers and make money, and there are people who think the world can just exist in basements and info-shops, and that bands that play big venues or 21+ shows, or license their music for something, are somehow morally reprehensible. Neither is the case, at least in my opinion.
To me, DIY means doing it your own way. Doing what you want to do and making your own decisions. It’s as simple as that. Just because you play in a basement, get some tattoos and sing songs about whiskey and cigarettes, doesn’t make you a DIY musician, and I think there are a ton of people that hide behind that. My question is this: What can you contribute? What will you create that’s new? How will you make things better for yourself and those around you, without being exclusionary? There’s so much going on that people just slap the “DIY” term on that just seems so counter-productive to me; stuff that’s just as limiting and unfair as the society that you’re supposedly an alternative to. It’s infuriating and creates just as many schisms and sects within a scene as there are outside of it.
Also, just to clarify the comment about 21+ shows, I will take an all-ages show over a 21+ show any day, but after having been on long tours and facing the prospect of either playing a 21+ show or having nothing at all, I’ll take the 21+ show. It’s never a first choice, though.
ILS: There’s a bit in the Minutemen documentary, We Jam Econo, where Mike Watt says something similar to the following, and I’m paraphrasing at best:
“What is to be done where you’re at, and how you gonna do it?”
That, to me, is the essence of the thing. A few years ago, I’d get really pissed off when bands I loved signed to major labels, particularly when Alkaline Trio and Against Me! did it, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realise that real life doesn’t conform to our ideals all the time, and punk rock isn’t some seperate little utopia running parallel to the real world, but part of it. I’d still much rather bands were able to get what they want on independent labels, but I’m not shaking my fist at pictures of Tom Gabel anymore, know what I mean?
I think sometimes we can buy into the dream of this utopian road warrior thing, as fans, and when the reality of the thing hits us, like maybe Henry Rollins would prefer to sleep in a bed, or the Stooges fancy licensing some music so they can put some money by for old age, it feels like a betrayal because it’s undermining that thing we cling to during our nine to five lives. Like, as long as Against Me! are out there living this dream, we as listeners haven’t bought in to the system we find ourselves within? Does that make sense?
On the topic of 21+ shows, our drinking laws in the UK are a lot more relaxed, it being legal to drink with a meal at 14, and drink without at 18, so it’s not a huge jump, but bars, pubs, and clubs still dominate, and a lot of the time that’s just about economics.
(Photo by Ted Novotny)
Max: I’ve written a bunch of responses to that, but I don’t think I can put it any better than you just did. Especially the line about how if a band is out there “living this dream”, then we can essentially live vicariously through them because to us, they seem insulated from the system. Nobody’s insulated from it - it’s just how you choose to conduct yourself.
ILS: Yeah. I’m a great believer in trying to change the world for a better, but I think you’ve got to pick your battles just to get by on the day to day, especially if you’re not lucky enough to have a lot of money behind you.
Are you much of a reader, and if so, what kind of stuff do you like to read?
Max: I’m not gonna lie to you - between music and design I don’t find a lot of time to do it. I read constantly when I was younger, but as soon as I picked up a guitar it kind of took the place of everything else. I have a habit of picking up a book, reading it about halfway through, getting sidetracked out of my routine, and totally forgetting about it. Right now I’m about in the middle of Slaughterhouse V and I’m very determined to finish it - it’s my first venture into reading Vonnegut, and it’s phenomenal so far.
And if you’ve got any recommendations I’m definitely listening.
ILS: I’ve never read any Vonnegut, but I’ve got a mate who swears by him. My favourite novel is The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. It’s philosophical sci-fi, and it examines a lot of the questions about ideology and utopian thinking that we’ve talked about here. Other than that, Human Punk and The Prison House by John King. For my money, he’s the greatest English novelist of our time, but a lot of people write him off without reading him because his debut novel, The Football Factory, was adapted into a feature film. The novel examined football violence and the surrounding culture from a range of points of view, and the film really didn’t, so he’s got an ill-deserved rep as a bloke who rights about, and for, hooligans, when he’s actually one of the most interesting and challenging liberal voices around. He’s also got a habit of standing up for working class culture, which isn’t particularly popular with our privately educated broadsheet journos, but whatever.
Max: I will admit that I like reading stories of adventure and travel a lot. I had a Kerouac phase, and I stumbled across this book called Exit 25 Utopia at a used book sale for $2 that basically chronicles the ’70s punk scene through the eyes of a few touring musicians based out of New York City. That era, and the crazy fusion of punk and Hip-Hop as they emerged in popularity, was awesome to read about. It makes sense that the books I like are related to music and travel, but I guess I need to broaden my horizons a bit. I promise I’ll check out your recommendations as soon as I’m done with SH5… so I’ll probably have them read by the time I’m 30.
ILS: That punk and Hip-Hop had strong roots in the same city in the same timeframe is a fact a lot of people miss. For my money, the basic philosophical tenets of the two are very similar, although they emerged from very different circumstances.
I think we should wind this up shortly, lest we natter about awesome stuff forevermore. Anything you want to plug, as far as Signals Midwest, or friends’ bands go?
Max: I grew up listening to punk and Hip-Hop, writing graffiti and skateboarding. It all served as an alternative and viable means of self-expression, and I definitely agree with you about the basic shared philosophy behind a lot of it.
As for plugs? Uh… our record comes out in November on Tiny Engines. They have been insanely cool so far. I think the pre-orders will be up in November, and they’ll ship early December. We’ll be doing some cool art prints, and colored vinyl and stuff, for the pre-order, so keep an eye out for that!
We also have two split 7”s coming out, one that we’re self-releasing late this month with our friends in Shady Ave. from PA and one in January on Solidarity Recordings with a killer band from LA called The French Exit. So we have a bunch of new music on the way. You can hear our whole discography at http://signalsmidwest.bandcamp.com.
One more thing that I want anyone who reads this to know: don’t sleep on bands from Ohio! There is so much great music coming out of this state and it’s amazing to be part of it. Check out every one of these bands: Worship This!, American War, Annabel, The Sidekicks, Reverse the Curse, Tin Armor, Andy Cook and the Wanderloons, Delay, Vacation, New Creases, The Fucking Cops, Two Hand Fools, Ultra Ultra, Gunnerson, Northwestern, Cherry Cola Champions… I know I’m definitely forgetting people, but the bottom line is that Ohio rules.
Thanks for the interview, this was super fun.
ILS: Already all over Tin Armor, and The Fucking Cops, but I’ll give the rest a go, too. Thanks Max.
You can find Signals Midwest on Bandcamp, Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. Tiny Engines can be found on Bandcamp, Twitter, Facebook, and on their own web-fiefdom.
Andy does I Live Sweat. You can find him… here.
“Digital and vinyl serve two different purposes…” Nick Mango challenges a few common assumptions about the ways we listen.
The fine gentlemen* at I Live Sweat gave me the opportunity to write an article comparing digital to vinyl, but, to be honest, as I started to think about it, I realized that the only time you see articles comparing these two things is when someone has a passionate opinion about one or the other. And yes, I could do that kind of article, but what good would it do us? Not much. My opinion on which is better or worse will not change anyone’s mind. It’ll just be another ranting piece of drivel falling on the deaf ears of those opposed to my opinion, so I thought it might be a better idea to do an article about how digital and vinyl serve two different purposes, and it’s those purposes that we actually have passion for, not the medium in which we experience them.
I Own More Than a 1000 Coffee Tables
The term “format”, by definition, is the form in which content is presented to an audience. For instance, the digital format is presented to it’s audience as a music file encoded as MP3, AAC, FLAC, etc. The CD format is a disc that stores encoded data. The cassette… well, you see what I mean. Notice that in all these cases, the format is never more important than the content it presents. People don’t buy multiple CDs of the same album, unless the content is different. Meaning the album is remastered, or maybe they’ve added a couple B-sides, or live tracks. Vinyl, on the other hand, isn’t like that at all. People buy multiple copies of vinyl all the time. It’s one of the things that keeps vinyl growing as a business. So, in vinyl’s case, the format can be more important than the album. Which really means, sometimes vinyl isn’t really a format, especially by today’s standards.
Consider this, if I sold you a magazine printed on a table, and all you did with this magazine was rest your feet on it while you watched TV, would it still be a magazine? No, that’s a coffee table. Will some people read the coffee table? Sure, for a little while, but when they’re done the object they’ve purchased is still a coffee table. And that’s what vinyl has become. Yes, there’s music on that piece of plastic, and yes some people listen to it every once in a while, but when they’re done with it, it’s still there to be shown off and admired like a piece of furniture.
Digital, on the other hand, is a format. Digital exists for one purpose, and that purpose is to present music to an audience. When it’s not being played, it lays dormant. You can’t rest your feet on it. You can’t use the format as a conversation piece. You can only discuss the music the format presents. This is the first major problem with vinyl. The world is full of people that have no use for a whole bunch of coffee tables.
How Strong’s Our Will?
If you’ve read some of my articles or follow me on twitter, you know that I don’t believe many people listen to vinyl anymore. Yes, millions of units are being sold, but this doesn’t mean people actually listen to them. People might enjoy listening to vinyl. They might love it in fact, but they aren’t doing it, and one of the main reasons they’re not doing it is technology has made it so much easier to watch TV.
Back when vinyl was on top, TV was impossible to fill up on because of all the technological restraints of the time. The three major restraints were: there weren’t enough channels, there was only one TV in the house, and finally, there was no way to watch a show you missed. If your parents were watching Merv Griffin, you had to find some other way to occupy yourself. This meant make-out parties and music. The radio was originally a piece of home audio equipment, not just something in your car. You heard the song once, and if you wanted to hear it again, you kept listening to the station, or you went out and bought the record. If you wanted to know the lyrics, you didn’t go to Insert Random Song Lyric Site Here you read the inner sleeve.
Music was essentially our spare TV. It was a source of entertainment that you could never overdose on, because just like the TV, it was throttled by technological limitations. Here we are 50 years later and music is more accessible than ever. Unfortunately though, music didn’t go the way of the TV and get even more popular. Now that music is so easy to find and listen to, it’s taken on a different role. The role of the soundtrack.
Soundtracks Always Play Second Fiddle
Remember when lyrics started protests and riots? Now the only words that start protests are posted on Facebook walls. Remember when fans would cry hysterically and pass out at concerts? Now the only time we pass out is when water is 7 bucks a bottle, and we spent all our cash on the ticket. Remember when music separated us from our parents? Well back when music was one of our only distractions, parents were “square” and kids would hide their cigarettes.
Music used to inspire us to take up arms, or lose control over our emotions. Now everyone has a blog to preach their views. Everyone has a twitter account. Clothing is a 150 billion dollar industry in the US alone. And because of these things, expressing ourselves is not limited to blasting the Beatles and growing our hair long. Why do so many people say there’s no one making great music anymore? It’s because they think music has changed. But it’s not music that’s changed, it’s us that’s changed. The world has changed. Music doesn’t grab us like it used to, because we’re being grabbed by so many other distractions, we can’t experience it like we did in the past.
But we still love music, and we still want to listen to it, so what happens when you combine the ease of digital with 21st century distractions and commitments? You get a soundtrack. Music used to be our entire lives. Now it’s essentially become the soundtrack to living, and the soundtrack always plays second fiddle to the movie. It’s all just background music. We listen to it while we’re accomplishing something else. We listen to it while we’re working, or exercising, or driving from point A to point B.
We’re not using it for it’s intended purpose. It’s intended purpose is listening. And wouldn’t you know it, if you use vinyl for it’s originally intended purpose, it doesn’t easily leave you the ability to do something else at the same time. That’s the root of vinyl’s problem. We don’t use music for it’s intended purpose anymore. We use it as the soundtrack to the distractions of our lives. You think you can really experience an album while taking the subway to work at 7am? Music was meant to be listened to in one of two places. Live or in your bedroom. It was not created to keep you occupied while you walk on the treadmill.
Life is Complicated
So if the people buying vinyl don’t listen to it, then why do they buy it? I can sum that up in one very simple statement: The reason people still buy vinyl is because they either want help remembering the past, are trying not to forget the present, or want something to reflect on in the future. Vinyl is an object that helps you remember and discuss a particular time in your life. This is what draws people to vinyl. It’s what draws me. But even though I’m one of the biggest collectors of Punk and Hardcore out there, I still listen to digital all day long. Do I wish I could listen to vinyl all day long? Yeah, I also wish I had a garden that grew sold gold bars, but I don’t. Life is way too complicated to listen to vinyl whenever the mood hits me. But I still buy it. Why? Because one day life won’t be so complicated, and I’ll have a house on the beach with all the time in the world to rearrange my furniture.
Nick Mango is an entrepreneur and vinyl collector from Long Island, NY. He is the owner of LimitedPressing.com, TheOldLP.com and more. You can follow him on Tumblr at NickMango.com or on Twitter at @Alternate1985.
* (Andy’s note: Fear me, dear reader, for I am legion!)
“If you didn’t want to scoop ice cream for a living, you got in the van.” - Kate Tyler Wall examines the role punk has played over decades of economic shifts.
(Photo by Roland J. Wall)
It occurred to me this morning that it really wouldn’t have made a rat’s ass of difference if I’d spent the last three years seriously trying to develop marketable skills, and looking for real jobs, instead of listening to music, going to shows, and writing three punk novels. If last night’s Republican presidential candidates debate is any sign (I can’t watch such things because they depress me too much, but people from all sides were tweeting about it all night), anything I might have tried to learn or do will be nonexistent, or irrelevant, soon anyway. We’ll all be back in the Middle Ages, fighting for rat meat in the street, and gazing at the lighted mansions on the hill. With no health care in America, we can go back to dying en masse. Hey, more rat meat for me!
And on the cycle goes. I’m a born-late/’58 baby boomer, and any relationship that has to those born in 1948 is a marketing demographer’s fantasy. My group has endured some kind of economic recession, depression, or dislocation every decade of our adult lives. And it’s no coincidence that we were among the first to experience what came to be called punk music, and it’s reverberations, and revivals, each decade have come in tandem with each economic kick in the ass.
Take the ’70s, my high school and university years. Energy crises, gas lines, inflation, family disintegration. And the UK punks and the LA Kids of the Black Hole picked it all up and ran with it. I graduated into what I learned a few years ago were the worst economic conditions in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Except for the lucky ones who got in on the corporate/finance rape-and-pillage bandwagon, or went to law school, most of us just struggled along. My first job, the Monday after university graduation, paid minimum wage. That was the ’80s, and the California hardcore scene and those kids from Washington, DC were talking about it, directly and indirectly. If you didn’t want to scoop ice cream for a living, you got in the van.
They’ve done studies about this: My age cohort not only started out badly, but even during the boom years we never quite caught up. Things still pretty much sucked in the early ’90s, and when Kurt Cobain and grunge kicked open the front door they kindly left the back one open for the punks who had influenced them. Nostalgia tends to move in 20-year cycles. During the ’90s, ’70s reflections tended to focus on disco and superficial fashion, but “That 70s Show” really nailed one thing: The father character never held on to a steady job, and each one he got was more humiliating and dead-end than the last. Now everyone I know who was a teen in the ’90s is convinced that all the movies, comics, TV shows, and music (especially punk) were so much better then. We remember the recovery, but not its shaky foundations.
Huge sectors of the economy are gone forever. If you’re in school, or trying to figure out what you want to do, how can you plan? What fields are even going to exist in a year (let alone four)? And the punks have their work cut out for them this time: No selling handmade cassettes and zines to get by like in the ’70s, no gas money to get in the van like in the ’80s, no ’90s slacker subculture in which to take refuge. Everybody’s an involuntary slacker at the moment.
Still, I’m waiting for the punk scene to come to the fore again and get in the world’s face about it. Pat Graham of Spraynard (whom I’m going to see open for Kid Dynamite this weekend) said in recent interview that he’s worried punk audiences are too focused on just having a good time at shows, but that “punk is more than just singing your favorite songs with your friends.” Punk songs don’t have to be overtly political to capture the essence of a time and place. TV Party summed up the ’80s just as well as any Dead Kennedys diatribe. Too much earnestness reminds me of what passed for ’70s and ’80s political resistance in the university town where I lived (what Frank Turner aptly describes as “idiot fucking hippies” in “60s battle reenactments”).
But I’d still like to think that everybody I heard singing along to “Fuck Armageddon, This Is Hell” at the Bad Religion show last spring wasn’t hearing it as “Fuck Armageddon, Let’s Party.” I collect quotes about punk, and the best, like Pat’s and Frank’s, make two points: Punk is an expression for how we feel, and it can also be an outlet for challenging what makes us feel that way.
Kate Tyler Wall is an editor and writer from Delaware whose previous job experience might as well have been in blacksmithing for all the good it’s doing now, and who worries too much about how musicians, artists, and writers will be able to survive. She can be found complaining on Twitter as @KateBegins2Rock.
“Zines and the (increasingly understood to be) free and open Internet are a way to dissolve barriers traditionally made too daunting by class structures.” - Nowah Jacobs weighs in on the topic of grass-roots media.
(Andy’s note: This piece is a response to a previous guest post on this topic which you can find here)
(photo by Naomi Nagler)
I have looked at academic papers written by my peers at university and I have been able to point out inconsistencies in their uses of APA, MLA, and Chicago citation styles. I have been encouraged by my professors to submit my own academic works to journals with the word Quarterly in the title. I regularly look up that Pictures of Sad Children comic of David Foster Wallace trapped on a desert island and laugh out loud. I, like Costa Koutsoutis, personally place value on my own literacy and, (too often), on the literacy of others, but yet I diverge quickly and harshly from the thesis of his recent I Live Sweat essay.
Academe is an institution historically at odds with a punk rock ethic. Consider the frequently massive disparities in academic literacy rates, and, indeed, overall scholastic success, across race-, gender-, and class-based lines. It seems to me as though Costa writes from a similar degree of privilege from which I do. If there was one thing I wasn’t made to struggle with, it was my right to learn. But I acknowledge, appreciate, and regret that the same cannot be said for many of my peers in punk who, for one reason or dozens, have not been afforded the same opportunity.
If I insist that I want nothing to do with his rough drafts, I’m minimizing the experiences of my roommate who wasn’t properly taught, by a failing public education system, the difference between your and you’re. If I throw away Cheap Toys #7 without reading it because academic English is not my friend’s first language, I am engaging in the symbolic annihilation of his entire culture. If someone’s print job is a little fudged because she can’t afford to spend eighteen cents a page to have it done at Staples, I owe it to her to listen to what she has to say. It’s unlikely that many people do, and frankly I find it unlikely that she’s taking herself any less seriously than the “big boys” clinging to a crumbling infrastructure of boarded up Boarders’ and blog-of-the-week book deals.
Zines and the (increasingly understood to be) free and open Internet are a way to dissolve barriers traditionally made too daunting by class structures. They have emerged as an invaluable lesson in each individual’s entitlement to an opinion. And it is baffling, to me, the notion that we as punks should do anything but nurture that creativity in each other. Jen Twigg says of sexism in the punk scene that we “owe it to ourselves to grow and learn together.” I think that her outlook extends to this discussion as well. We must direct our rage toward the institutions that have failed us, rather than faulting each other for being failed by them. We owe it to ourselves to grow and learn and teach together, and we deserve to be supported by our community.
And if my advisor, Dr. Jody Waters, had refused to look at my drafts, I wouldn’t have graduated college with the capacity to reject my privilege in this way.
Nowah Jacobs is a writer, bassist, and radio producer living vicariously through Bloomington, Indiana. He has an intense love for roadside America, and would love to read everything that you have ever written in your whole entire life. He can be contacted at yummyache.tumblr.com.
“We can do better. We should do better.” Costa Koutsoutis offers his thoughts on the shortcomings of subcultural journalism
(Andy’s note: If you’d like to write a guest piece on this topic, whatever your view, please get in touch via ilivesweat at gmail dot com.)
Coming from backgrounds in what would be considered “outsider” cultures, like independent music and comic book culture, it’s initially hard to see where serious critical works about either one can be found. Granted, in the past several years (arguably decades if you’re including The Comics Journal), there has been a growth in terms of critical analysis and serious journalism. However, to the outside world, that sort of writing is seen as less than professional, primarily because of the nature of the cultures.
A huge aspect of writing about outsider cultures are news announcements regarding things starting, things ending, and things changing. For the most part you still do find that from what are considered “professional” news outlets for outsider cultures. To get any real measure of critical analysis, questioning, reporting, or academic thought, you need to look at amateur work.
Fan-driven outlets such as ‘zines and blogs are where people have traditionally gone for that sort of stuff. We go to blogs for reviews of material, for opinions on topics within the communities, and for analysis of topics and issues that have come out of the culture. It’s the inherit nature of being a fan, as well as having the writing bug, either as an academic or a journalism-related fan; You want to write.
However, this is where I think that we as communities have to admit it starts to fall short. Far too often, I see terribly-put together ‘zines about music that are pretty illegible and unprofessional. I’m sorry, but in this day and age there is no excuse to have the resources to create a print periodical and not be able to make it look at least semi-professional. I can’t tell you the amount of ‘zines I’d get and just throw out without reading them. Why? Too small print that seemed almost purposefully smudged and dark, and proofreading and editing mistakes that anyone with ten minutes to spare and a dictionary could have caught. It was painful to see resources and potential go to so much waste simply because the standards that ‘zine communities set for themselves (or a lack thereof) are simply not high enough.
The Internet and blogs are another monster altogether, with content appropriated and used without citation, and opinions and editorials passed off as “journalism”, that, because of the unorganized urgency with which the mainstream press tries to appropriate web journalism, ends up being touted as a legitimate outlet.
And for those that put a lot of work into actually attempting to be serious non-traditional media outlets and writers/critics, that’s a serious blow to the you-know-what. The unfortunate acceptance of less-than-professional writing in “outsider” cultures as a legitimate has created a stigma and a standard where work that would be considered as “average” in any other academic or journalism outlet is now “extraordinary” to comics and music writers.
And that’s a shame.
As writers and critics, we need to hold ourselves to higher standards as communities when it comes to aspects like journalism and academics. Plain and simple.
No one is going to take you seriously if you don’t take your craft seriously. That’s what it always boils down to, from art, to journalism, to academics, to cartooning, to music. And when it comes to trying to encourage serious discussions and analysis about issues in your craft and culture, the way you approach it is incredibly important. Applying some key professional basics that cost no money can go a long way to separate you from everyone else. Taking the time to create your outlet, working to establish real contacts, doing the actual research, covering every base when it comes to proper links and citations, and making sure you have the rights to use images… It’s a lot of work.
Going on Twitter or Facebook and calling yourself a critic, just because you tell me just how deep you think Alan Moore is every day? Not working, especially if you want to run with the big boys. Making purposefully sloppy ‘zines with purposefully non-structured writing in it just for the sake of appearing “punk rock”? Doesn’t make me take you seriously as a journalist or critic. The first thing I did when I seriously started writing as an academic was get style guides. The same goes for my journalism; I got cheap copies of style guides and format examples. I was working with editors at this point as a writer, and they didn’t take any shit when it came to telling me I was wasting their time with rough drafts.
Don’t waste my time with your rough drafts. If we want to be able to do this as serious writing, we need to stop considering our rough drafts as being “good enough”. It’s not good enough. We can do better. We should do better. We, as writers, critics, bloggers, journalists, and academics, owe it to everyone who reads our work and takes something away from it.
Costa Koutsoutis is a culture writer/editor, educator, and cartoonist. He grades papers, fights fanboys, writes about music and comic books, and walks the dog in Columbus, Ohio. He’s got a Hot Water Music tattoo and reads newspaper comic strips regularly. He blogs here.
“Sexism is a disgusting undercurrent in our society and it needs to be fought and challenged.” - David Combs (Spoonboy) on sexism, etc. (TRIGGER WARNING FOR ACCOUNT OF ATTEMPTED SEXUAL ASSAULT)
(Andy’s note: This piece was originally posted by our friends over at PunkNews.org. David was keen that it be posted here also, and the PunkNews staff were fine with that. I had intended to pop it up months ago, but it got lost in the shuffle. Sorry!)
(TRIGGER WARNING FOR DISCUSSION OF RAPE/SEXUAL ASSAULT)
(Photo by Unknown - let us know if you know!)
Let’s get right into it.
When I was 19 I was walking to the bus station in a part of town I wasn’t familiar with when an older man pulled me into an alley and attempted to rape me at knife point. I can only thank fortune that I got away unharmed. If we’re talking about sexism, I can only think to start there. Most people don’t think sexism matters. Here’s why I think it matters. What I experienced for months after that encounter was a visceral fear of men. If I was walking alone, I crossed the street if I saw a man coming down the sidewalk. My heart palpitated if a man pulled me aside at a show. Eventually the fear subsided.
But I’m lucky. Not only because I got away, but because I was born in a male body. And because I’m comfortable in my male body. It was statistically unlikely that an attempted assault like that would ever happen to me. It’s statistically unlikely that it will happen again. It helped me get over my fear to know that. It wouldn’t be the case if I was a woman. Almost every woman I have been close with has had an experience of being sexually assaulted or having had someone make an attempt. The statistics say 1 in 3 women is sexually assaulted, and that’s only the people who report it. I have a hard time believing it’s not a higher percentage. I have a hard time believing that some element of the experience I came close to having hasn’t been a reality for the majority of the women I know, women who may not necessarily have been assaulted by strangers, but maybe worse, assaulted by people they trusted.
I keep this in mind when I hear women’s experiences. I keep in mind that most women have to live with the knowledge that at any time they could be the subject of an assault, that they are constantly targets, just for being women. I keep in mind that most women live with a minimal level of distrust for men, and that even the most courageous women have to watch their backs when they walk alone at night. And I keep this in mind when people talk about living in a “post-feminist society,” or about how sexism is a thing of the past. Those ideas are wholly unconvincing. As long as rape is a crime that’s being committed in extremely disproportionate numbers by men against women, I will not be convinced that everything’s ok. Sexism is a disgusting undercurrent in our society and it needs to be fought and challenged. And rape is only one of the many, (albeit probably the ugliest) ways that it rears its head.
So the question has been brought up: is there sexism in the punk scene? It’s not the first time the question’s been asked. Twenty years ago, Riot Grrl made it an extremely visible issue. But now as those Bikini Kill records have been historicized as relics isolated in the past, a quick reading of the latest book on Riot Grrl will show that all of the same problems women were fighting against then still exist today. Is there sexism in the punk scene? Of course. Punk is not an impenetrable bubble whereupon entrance we shed all the socialized attitudes we grew up with. As long as we live in a sexist patriarchal culture that teaches its children sexist patriarchal attitudes, those attitudes will reappear within punk culture. And it manifests in all sorts of ways: There’s the “I wanna kill my ex-girlfriend” songs. There’s male band members telling rape jokes. There’s women in bands being degraded and objectified, or not being taken seriously as musicians. There’s girls at shows being treated like coat hangers. And there’s the sad truth that punks rape and are raped.
But if you really need evidence that there’s sexism in punk, look around at the next show you’re at. Unless you participate in an unusually egalitarian scene (and that’s great if you do), the chances are the majority of the audience will be male, but more importantly, chances are 100% of the performers will be male. The all-male-show is so normalized in punk, and it sends a clear message about whose voice is being heard, who’s experience is central. The all-woman-show is far far rarer, and when it does happen, often men in the scene will act defensive and complain they are being excluded, as if they’re oblivious to the fact that women are excluded in punk on an almost constant basis. Until the centerpiece of punk culture - the punk show - is occupied by people of all genders, in an egalitarian way, I won’t be convinced that there’s not sexism in punk.
So what does this have to do with rape? Try this: in the mind of a rapist, a woman is less than human. Her feelings and experiences are not worth consideration. She’s considered a sexual object. She’s not taken seriously. Most men aren’t rapists, but most men do subscribe to greater or lesser variations of those attitudes. Subtle and less subtle ideas about male superiority are ubiquitous, and that base level of disrespect that men harbor towards women is what makes it possible to live in a world where the majority of women experience sexual assault and harassment, and no one bats an eye. This is called “rape culture.” The logic is that women are inferior and thus the pain inflicted by sexist crimes is not given weight. So if women’s experiences are not valued in the punk scene, if they are systematically excluded, and women laughed at when they voice their complaints, the punk scene is basically giving a thumbs up to a culture that doesn’t value women’s experiences. It may not be an active endorsement of rape culture, but it’s acceptance through passivity.
Now, I’d hope it’d be obvious that I’m not equating an all male punk show with rape. I do want to emphasize the emotional gravity that even subtler sexist attitudes hold. But the fact that I’d need to qualify my statement speaks to the overwhelming phenomenon of male defensiveness. When men are told that we’re in part responsible for contributing to a sexist culture, we tend to lash out - as if we are being accused of being at fault for our biological make-up. Men tend to bond together and try to tear down whoever is bringing up those criticisms, as if we are each personally under attack. What’s important to understand is that culture is built out of a multitude of influences and interactions. A condemnation of a sexist culture is not the same thing as a condemnation of the individuals that participate in it. Recognizing that you were raised in a sexist culture and probably hold sexist attitudes does not make you an asshole, but refusing to acknowledge it does.
And recognizing that our male dominated culture is fucked up doesn’t make you a self-hating man, either. When I first heard Bikini Kill, it was fucking thrilling. Hearing someone lash out against dominant sexist attitudes wasn’t exciting in some sort of “oh good for women, they’re standing up for themselves,” type of way. It was liberating to hear someone take on those traditional expressions of masculinity, because I hated the ways I was expected to act as a man. I hated the toughness and numbness that was expected from men, because I wanted to be able to express my emotions without fear of ridicule. I hated the predatory way that men acted towards women, because I wanted to be free to have meaningful relationships with women. Likewise, I hated the homophobia, because I wanted to have meaningful relationships with the men in my life. I see men around me all the time who refuse to show any signs of vulnerability for fear of appearing feminine, and they tend to cut themselves off emotionally from the world. It’s fucking sad. I see men all the time who only view their relationships in terms of conquest, and I can’t think of one of them who has a healthy emotional life. Breaking down ideas around male superiority and masculinity is absolutely in mens’ best interests. In a punk context, I can say with certainty that the scenes I’ve visited that were the most gender inclusive have always been the most exciting and thriving music communities. There’s nothing to be gained for men in maintaining the boy’s club.
I want to address one common anti-feminist argument: It’s the “men have always been sexist, and that’s just how things are” argument. There are plenty of examples of non-patriarchal societies that have existed, so for one thing, it’s historically inaccurate, but even putting that aside, arguing that doing something for a long time makes it right is a nonsensical way to approach ethics. It’s like saying “there’s always been murder, so we might as well accept murder as a good and natural part of our lives.” I’m sure the same arguments were made to protect slavery. It’s also biological essentialism to say that men will always act a certain way based on their gender. So much of our behavior is socialized and the expected traits of masculinity are no exception. There have been cultures where humans have acted in all sort of ways that would seem completely unnatural to us, but those cultures functioned fine on their own terms. If people have lived without concepts that seem essential to our lives, like number systems for example, I think we can do alright without something as banal as patriarchy.
It’s also historically short sighted that so many people hold such defeatist attitudes when it comes to our ability to change the way things are. In the last century and a half we’ve shed the cultural acceptance of slavery, we’ve stopped discriminatory voting practices based on race or gender, and we’ve shed all kinds of official policies that allowed discrimination in the workplace and other public spheres. These are things that we’ve all, even the most privileged among us, come to tout as hallmarks of progress. There’s no reason we shouldn’t continue to shed any acceptance of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. that exists now, just because it might seem less obvious.
So boys: if you’ve read this far and you’ve bought my argument that yes, sexism exists, and yes, it matters, and yes, it even exists in the punk scene, where do you go with it? I can offer some suggestions, but first consider this point from Aaron Scott (of Attica Attica)’s essay on I Live Sweat, “If you need suggestions for how to make women feel welcome, then I suggest you ask the females in your local scene. They probably have some pretty specific ideas.” That first and most important thing that men can do to combat sexism is to take women seriously when they voice their concerns. We are socialized not to, so it’s crucial that we do. And don’t try to dictate whether someone else’s experience qualifies as oppression. To quote Jen Twigg (of the Ambulars)’s essay from that same website, experiences of sexism are like “a thousand tiny paper cuts… - you wouldn’t make a big deal about one on its own, but a thousand of them together are a gaping wound.”
My next strongest suggestion is to not be so afraid of self-criticism. You’ll probably find examples of sexism in your day to day behavior. I’ve found them in mine. I’ve looked back at things that I’ve done and realized how they were hurtful or inconsiderate and I’ve had to suck it up and apologize and change the way I act. Look at yourself and the actions of the men around you. Do you disproportionately talk over, or interrupt women? Are you more likely to make eye contact with men than women in group scenarios? These are the small symptoms that add up. Here’s a few more: Do you stop and notice that the way your dancing has all the women in the room backing away from the band? Do you try to prove your coolness or masculinity by one upping other men? Do you notice the women in your scene becoming disinterested when conversation drifts into dick measuring territory, when you’re comparing your record collections or gear knowledge? Do you use demeaning sexist language without thinking about it? Do you sexualize women and comment on their appearances or bodies, without thinking about how that makes them feel? I’m going to assume a lot of people reading this probably do. Like I said before, it doesn’t make you a bad person. But it does make you a lazy selfish person if you’re not willing to recognize and try to change those things.
Finally, we can do a lot more to encourage women to participate and play music. Supporting women-centered events like CLITfest and Ladyfest are great ways to do this, as well as the various Girl’s Rock Summer Camps that happen all over the country. That doesn’t mean we should be trying to dictate or organize these events, but be we should be allies, by offering the women who organize them our support and access to resources. Also, those of us who organize shows or play in bands can do a lot more in thinking about who we choose to book or play music with to keep the all-male-show from happening over and over again.
I want to finish by recommending a book and two essays that I think should be required reading. I’ve been distributing pieces of this literature in my records and on tour, because there’s only so far someone can go to change people’s attitudes by playing songs or writing an essay for a website. We need to be willing to educate ourselves and understand sexism and patriarchy if we’re going to fight against it. So here are my recommendations for starters:
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by Bell Hooks
Homophobia as Masculinity by Michael Kimmel
I Want a Twenty-Four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape by Andrea Dworkin
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions, thoughts, or arguments at spoobnob@gmail.com. I know some people will undoubtedly feel that the conversation is being beaten into the ground, but it’s a testament to the gravity of the issue that the argument bears repeating.
David Combs is a punk kid from Washington, DC. He plays guitar in the Max Levine Ensemble, and solo as Spoonboy. You can download his most recent record, ‘The Papas’, which was written around themes of patriarchal socialization, at his bandcamp page.
Source: punknews.org
