twenty odd years now

[This was heavily criticised by many people: just to clarify, I used examples, sometimes they're good, sometimes they're not so suitable, or pretty weak/out of context. I concede that arguing for new, aggressive self-representation is a bit flawed if  you're putting words in people's mouths they didn't ask for. Silly bryony. Still, for the last time, this wasn't written about any particular people or bands, but hey, Punk offends, world keeps turning.]

1. British winters are a peculiar breed. The problem is usually their interminable averageness. No deep freeze or breathtaking wind, just a slow procession of drizzle and grey-blue total cloud cover that today has the effect of making the high-rises across the road seem to blend into the sky. This year has been slightly more dramatic, yes we’ve had a few inches snow here and there, yes (of course) this was reported as a national ‘event’ which would make most more snow-acclimatised countries laugh the tennis raquets off their feet. This being Britain, the ‘freak’ weather came complete with, a few days into the ‘crisis’, much tabloid-newspaper consternation that the distribution of grit for the roads and pavements was an income dependent post-code lottery. Of course they weren’t inciting class war really, just having a futile moan, and as usual the sentiment melted faster than the icy stuff itself, leaving them to get back on with lambasting the usual cause of ‘Broken Britain’ – Polish lesbian Black immigrants (possibly Jewish) that are hellbent on establishing Sharia Law and anally penetrating your kids. Okay that may have been a bit of a skim read, and yes, while I’m more than lucky to not share a country with Limbaugh et al, here we are in the company of cancerous journo-turds like Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn, whose not-so-latent fascism still gets bought into way too much for my liking.

2. ‘So Tough! So Cute!’ Right on rampage, no apologies.

Why does a band described thus make me so angry? It’s not even for a gig, or a punk night, it’s another of these increasingly derivative and weird fetishisations of the symbolism and referents of riotgrrl for the purposes of a ‘themed’ night at some abberation ‘oh-but-everyone’s-going’ deadbeat bar in East London. Sooo when girl bands supposedly taking queues from messthetics and Delta 5 are sandwiched between DJs, and described happily as ‘So Tough! So Cute!’ I can’t help but make everything all awkward (damn me) and at least raise the question. Am I only heightening the awful otherness by wondering where the politics and self-criticism went? Doesn’t it matter anymore? There are more and more girls in bands in London and its more than exciting in a way, but seems everyones got peculiar ambitions and certainly noone appears to wanna challenge how they’re represented and mediated as women, or as a band, noone is being ballsy or worried about it. What does it means when, as I saw the other week, ten ‘helpful’ boys rush the stage at the sound of a coy ‘oh gosh, how do you work this amp!?’ tee hee!? Also, that familiar sort of ironic sing-song vocal delivery of that kind of bored-style talky disaffected stripped down lady punk was so powerful to me when I first heard it, presicely because of what they WERE saying, hidden in that seemingly dispassionate tone. The next step seems to have been to sing in a way that sure sounds like that, but make lyrics so happily content/context-void so as to neuter the whole shebang, Someone swapped a manifesto for guestlist spots, now the Minorest of all threats, made frilly enough to warrant a predatory ‘give us a twirl’ from the soundman. Fuck.

Back in the summer we played a few gigs with with Finally Punk, at one in particular I felt really weird and I couldn’t put my finger on it apart from one-way desire from audience to stage, as the band, who seemed at one with each other in a really awesome psychic way, stripped off to just t-shirts and knickers and frolicked about. They are all classically beautiful, toned and American, a deadly trio for English boys natch, and it was warm, and the band clearly didn’t give a fuck, of course, but the hope that they, well, that they might, if you catch my drift, well it felt palpable in that sweaty room, in a way that unnerved me, and I’m not a prude by any stretch. I read this quote ‘The idea of women empowering themselves by becoming sexual objects is backward. It seemed brilliant at one point, but it had really bad ramifications. Things lose their context so quickly.’ Okay it’s Kim Gordon and theres a whole other kettle of fish right there, but my worry is just that bar room sexism finds its comfiest home when everyone or even just a few people, think the job is somehow done because there’s girls on stage. Still, thank god, for every wah-wah-lalala-content-bankrupt band like Pens, there is a band like CHAPS from Bristol. (I wish the ratio was actually that way, but you get my meaning – http://www.myspace.com/chapsforever)

A few months ago, we went to a gig (it always starts the same way.) Some power pop bands played, some great ones, some not so great, some that made me question if this was really all that punk whilst having me tapping my toes so frenetically i forgot the question. After the set of one of the touring, female-fronted supports from the US, I found myself in conversation with some boy-friends, one ventured, still in a dreamlike state, and the other quickly backed up, that there is just something ‘so damn hot’ about a girl being in a band. After calling them creepy weirdos, I began to wonder about where this strange ‘hot’ came from, if it was something to do with the woman being so precisely in the proverbial spotlight that the usually kind of covert sexualised gaze is given automatic space for the duration of the set at least, and that’s maybe boner-enducing? At the same show, talking about this with a girl-friend of mine, she criticised the singer of said band for ‘playing right into their hands’ by being sugary and ‘too inoffensive’ – even just for being blonde! Now I peg that as kind of unhelpful. Personal politics shouldn’t have to come into every musical expression, girl or boy. But then that made me think maybe the weird ‘hot’ thing could be equally due to the fact that being in a band and making music is radical and super fun and that a person that does that and looks like she or he’s having fun is attractive – aka maybe I should chill the fuck out.

There’s surely no accounting for taste, but I’ve been trying to prove to some silly people that you can infact sing in octaves and notes-that-must-be-hit and still be really fucking angry and maybe a bit politically articulate. Like uh, haven’t they heard the Shangri Las? X? Pfft. Trouble is, composure’s one thing in theory, but the self-actualising agency of simply holding a microphone is all too often mitigated by the all-too-real fear that you can see my arse crack, or that i probably am too big for this tshirt and these lights aren’t flattering or that I look a stupid hiefer. (Sure, I talk of manifestos, yet this shit doesn’t stop mattering, somehow.) So recently when we played (with a one-off reunited Zounds, ferchrissakes) the other day, I was SO pumped for it, and then a legion of unbelievably moronic street punk types were being gropey bad bastards the whole way through our set, making shit comments, trying to grab my boobs, getting their dicks out even, I wanted to make a point, be ‘funny’ to diffuse how horrible I felt, some polemic, some kind of neat rebuttal to the butt display, because well, noone else was responding, but instead I just kept mumbling ‘fucking punks don’t get it’ and huffing. Eventually I did slap one of them who made more of move to my boobs than I was prepared to accept, which was weird because I’ve never done that before, and I don’t know if ineffectual violence towards a cider-faced teenage stage penis who was literally almost unconscious-wasted really did much to advance the cause, but needs must. Of course they goofed about during the other bands sets, but in very different ways. I kind of wish they’d gone for the singer of Violent Arrest because that dude would have definitely done better than my pissy slap.

Ultimately, every stage is a fucking minefield and, apart from in cases like that, its not always anyone in this room’s fault. Still, while we continue to stand in in this proverbial room, its gotta be our responsiblity to at least recognise, if not engage with all this stuff in some way, no? Am I going mental? Wah. Clearly i’m working through these ideas as they slap me about the face, not with much in the way of any deeper tools than my own experiences, and maybe it shows, so, ugh, sorry.

3. Threeearworms.

My friend Lenny took me to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons today, which is a massive collection of so many different biological oddities – both human and animal. Pickled walrus tumour, distended sheep’s gut, gigantism sufferer’s skeletons, otter and lizard-face biopsies and more pickled foetuses than you could shake one of their massively brutal seventeenth century forceps at. There was almost definitely some kind of pickled ear-eating worm type monster, too. What i’m saying is I forgot to have lunch before hand and very nearly brought back my coffee on coming across a frog preserved at the moment of tadpole dispatch from weird little chambers in its stomach. RANK. I work as a visitor host at the British Museum, which is a more general (and deeply problematic in too many ways to go into here) ‘treasures of colonialism’ type affair, I just look at mummified stuff all day, and am now eternally glad that there’s little chance of me coming across anything quite as gruesome as the hairpin in the spleen I saw today. Ee gads. Anyway, Earworms, the other meaning. This month has been a more than usual repeated bashing of Securicor by Crass just for the best use of dog breed names in punk, and because it reminds me of Ralph Simmond’s two high-concept ‘name-only’ bands, a queercore darkwave two piece called Penetrating Gaze (ho ho) and primitive dbeat noise in the form of … Pissed Alsatian. If anyone can think of anymore dog songs beyond that Shellac record called ‘Excellent Italian Greyhound’ then email me – I’d like to make a tape. I’m also obsessed with Beer Can Beach by Surf Punks, completely ridiculous sparse bass-led like a jokier more-beach-based Devo dealing mostly with Californian beach turf wars it seems? I’m no expert but the area of South Wales I grew up in had a similar thing, except everyone just pretended to be a ‘Surfie’ and never went near the sea cos it’s fucking freezing. ‘My Beach’ is great as a novelty LP, but bro has definitely got sand in his bloody mouth organ, uncalled for. Either way, I cannot wait for summer to blast this on one side of a tape and Simpletones on the the other. Thirdly, Italian band Chain Reaction for the song ‘Bloody Ways.’ The vocals sound like he’s being flayed and kind of somehow liking it in a dirty way, its hyperspeed fast, easy on the production values and heavy on the accent, so great, tuneful and ballsy. Also Hi, totally not metal, unlike everyone else in 1985. The rest of the EP (Gabiie on Belfagor Records) has songs titled stuff like ‘Your Bloody War’ and ‘Personal Autodistruzione’ so make an informed choice there. I’m listening to this and reading Paulo Virno, and it WORKS, ho ho. If you can get me a copy of this, the email is there for a reason.

4. We finally, after what, six releases, started maintaining a proper internet presence so people can actually buy our records should they choose to, and whatever guff we’ve traded for. I nearly tore my own hands off trying to make it look not shit and then gave up but nevertheless, Dire Records has embraced the future. Where’s my jetpack? (if you want to look or maybe get a Sceptres record – fuck off I know – then god willing it should still be there – www.direrecords.com)

5. Garbled, but eh. So. Deleted from the internet…kind of.. something about planning actions not results and taking advice from semi-strangers. That email-only seems like puritanical cold turkey is weird but probably good. Regaining some semblance of inner life and trying to undo this constant partial attention we’ve had bred into us. I’ve swapped it for reading Walter Benjamin under the duvet (the night before the seminar of course) and that phrase ‘I contain multitudes’ loops on my frozen cycle ride as a hopeful kinda metronome. It’s only nine miles across the city but it feels like an adventure. I wait in library until its dark – four pm – mainly just for the way the high rises look across the river, impotent as every other financial capital now, but London still floors me when least expected. Home and wheezing. Dusty as hell and the glue has dried up to nothing, but I found the first LP ever bought. Played each side five times. Maybe back to the start or maybe reborn, today it’s impossible to tell, but for an accidental stuck groove mantra – You can’t be what you were, so you better start living the life that you’re talking about.

BB – bryonybeynon@gmail.com // http://www.direrecords.com