twenty odd years now

I am typing this at a desk at the MRR compound. Yeah. I’ve broken the fourth wall, I am inside the matrix. The BB-eagle has landed. Cripes. In a usual month, the only column that would travel further than mine (in er, email miles?) is Dan’s (All Foreign Hunk) so to say I’m pumped to be living the dream in San Francisco instead of shivering in London is an understatement. I’m here chiefly in the name of a month-long dream blur of burritos, fog, putting my fingers on every record ever, helping these guys make rent whilst joyfully edging your world with miles and miles of that apocryphal green tape.

Wait. Who are you and why I am here? We went to Chaos in Tejas. Summary: Bullet-belt Butlins in an Oven. Undoubtedly the warmest I’ve ever been. The British will not be cooked in this way without consequences. Not only did I miss all the good aftershows due to being so completely exhausted from the strenuousness of just being awake in the heat, but poor Ellis fainted on the bus – so dehydrated and full of stale booze that his eyes went black and his face went white. (No dramatisation there, that’s exactly how it was.) It was a bizarre moment of total horror where the only thing you can think is ‘Please don’t die’ and ‘Why don’t I know first aid?’, compounded due to the fact that we were riding the airport shuttle on the first day, so literally most of hardcore witnessed his collapse. I am not very good at fests at the best of times (read: missing Arctic Flowers and Waste Management) I’m prone to social awkwardness, I hate crowds, I like sitting down, and sadly all too often these sorts of concentrated events seem to serve chiefly to remind me that no, wearing the shirt of a band I like doesn’t stop someone from being a towering apex of moronity (welcome to obvious-town, I know.) As such, I will leave the band-by-band review to other columnists that will I’ve no doubt cover it off with a flourish far more illustrious than I’m capable of. Instead; a few paradigmatic observations. On the second day, I walked past a young man who caught my stunned attention for a few horrorstruck moments, being, as he was, the ergh, bodily proprietor of an odour so consuming, so advanced, so acrid as to defy its own description, other than to say that he smelt not of sweat or piss, but of a kind of human vinegar. Seriously, what makes a punk start fermenting? My eyes actually watered. Sure, screw the system and don’t be oppressed, but also have fun wanking alone. Forever. On another equally harrowing tip, being Jerry A. in 2010 must be a sad and lonely predicament, I would have fronted that scab shitty-oake better than him and I’m a five foot six and Welsh. I did have great fun though, saw a shitload of bats and neon signs (I am big into neon signs) I might go again, and I now know the brilliance of three things I did not before: Nerveskade, the Rival Mob (I have sorely missed the obnoxiousness of the better breed of Lockin’ out bands as a presence in hardcore over the last few years) and a good set of earplugs. Oh, and that sometimes its easier to just suck it up and ask for ‘wah-deurgh’ instead of ‘waught-ah.’

Back to my jaunt in the Yay Area, then, and somewhere in the background there’s the small matter of conning my postgrad assessors at university into believing that hanging out in a punk rock reality TV pilot (in the absolute best possible way) for a month somehow constitutes the participant observation research into volunteer-run cultural production (or something to that effect) that I promised to return to the UK with. I know, call me Lux Ulterior, right? As much as I play it down, a little embarrassed at what some would term ‘backyard research,’ it’s better than the other option of letting some goose pick me a shitty internship where I might not be able to listen to records all day and hang out, right? Anyway, it worked out pretty well because the cumulative amount of graft witnessed in just a few days has literally blown my tiny mind. Some cheesy ‘oh how laudable’ sentiment is not what i’m aiming for, maybe admiration on a level its hard to vocalise, either way to see all this and live here even temporarily definitely raises interesting questions about what it really means to make your life about your culture. I’d wager few people outside the Bay Area are aware of how much work goes into MRR. So far, all there is to report is a an open-mouthed staring at super human levels of what-we-do-is-secret stalwart organisational brilliance, the likes of which in the world of paid work would warrant a six figure salary and a team of secretaries, but cuz this is punk is undertaken by get-it-done saints in between shifts waiting tables, selling books and every other manner of work required to make living money. ‘Noone recieves any salary’ is printed in every issue of MRR, but when you think about what that actually entails its pretty wild. How many hours are in your working day? For now let’s just say inky fingers are the final link in a very long chain, so moan all you like but the product of hundreds and hundreds of hours worth of activity every month continues to come out. Of course all this is not (normally) part of the narrative within these pages, because its quite rightly more concerned with covering the punk rock instead, but, as the youth say, I’m just sayin’.

One other thing; Total Abuse, the internet, European tour, ah blah blah blah memes lolcats what? I guess I set up a London gig then realised I’d be here in SF on the date, leaving it in the hands of some friends who have, in my absence, stepped up in a major way and responded with ingenuity to the ailing clusterfuck that the tour suddenly became, as ever mediated by the bizarre spiralling torture of messageboard politics. As a point of principle their whole situation can stay away from my brain as I genuinely can’t get a handle on it, or at least I keep going back and forth, still missing the solution thats probably somewhere between righteous DIY you-asked-for-it bro and flagrant ‘fuck you i’m pissing out ya window’ bro – but screw it. On a wider level though, it seems that cultural differences re: way that punk gets done across the world is a tension point par excellence more than ever. There’s more ins and out than swiss cheese on this subject, but summarily, if you’re going to play even a single gig outside your own town or social circle, acceptance that hey, you’re not Elvis, has gotta be top of the list, and the one thing to pack along with condoms and sunglasses is a massive, ultra-absorbent bumper pack of humility and perspective. Good gosh, reality breakdown. For example, having recently had to tease an apology from another apparently tantrum-prone US band after being not-that-indirectly called a ‘fucking asshole’ from the stage for not being able to provide a third back-up guitar head, I got to thinking about all this. Of course, they’d only be band number infinity to be faced with the sour realisation that band-owned backline and gear is sparse at best and non-existant at worst in the UK, so yes, we have to share, and that thems the shitty, shitty breaks. The apology-mitigating argument was that, by letting support bands use equipment the touring bad had paid to hire, said band were being forced to work harder, longer hours as individuals on their return home….. Dubious logic, perhaps, for those who would view overseas tours as more of a paid holiday than a bitter lesson in knife-edge bad economics, after all punk gigs don’t stand up to business principles, duh… but the real juggle of these times is how to reconcile plowing the ‘fuck you’ furrow of stylistic nihilism that is somewhat de rigeur in today’s most popular brands of punk, whilst, as is the nature of touring, relying completely on the hospitality and kindness of your hosts as well as the deep pockets of those that will pay in to see you. For my money, even if it cracks your mystique (and at this point, even having one is at best a well-worn schtick and at worst, over exposed and frankly tired, and I mean this re: all ‘privileged enough to care about nothing’ hardcore) if you can start out by just consciously trying not to be a dick, you can relax from a position of strength, don those shades, and maybe even play some tunes!

1. Behind the Schemes at the Museum.

April has bust through the seams and alla sudden work is a warzone, silent strikes (union members won’t tell me whats happening and I couldn’t join if I wanted to, no contract, no rights.) Management bargaining postures are as subtle as King Jong-Il, I’m trying to show solidarity for struggles that aren’t mine, but the only mind in which I’d be a scab, as a temp, for covering shifts left empty due to strikes, is my own, and i’m pretty sure its the temps they’re cutting out anyway. Gah. Some say cover your own ass and the rest will follow, but signing new contracts that rob all of any unauthorised toilet breaks (‘please sir, can I take a piss?’) and forbid talking with other staff unless ‘brief and/or work-related’ may be one step too far. Bear in mind as a lowest-rung ‘visitor host’ in a kinduvuabigdeal museum, this means literally standing in a room by yourself for eight to ten hours. Take away my aimless chats with cooworkers and you take away my humanity and soon my sanity. I hid a scrawled ‘fuck you’ in an unusually elaborate signature and signed it anyway. Comedically self defeating strategy, that and talking all the louder on shift – Insolence as a form of rebellion, I notice myself slowly getting slacker as shining examples are ignored and the tiniest indiscrepancies of my colleagues are seized upon. Phil’s got a bad leg, used up all his sick days, management are onto him he says, sure of it, croaks when he’s worried, and from today he must ask a supervisor a third his age for permission to can limp to the loo. Angie’s been there fifteen years, the place is her whole life, she’s got a grip on that radio like you wouldn’t believe (received, over) more than just a last straw for her. Something about struggles assuming new forms. These are our weird new quiet battles, the frontline’s been effaced with some corporate-sponsored street art, and the factory has glass doors and award-winning architecture. Culture mercenaries working flexitime and wondering idly about tax rebates. Motivation hits the floor and the gap between what they’re told and what they know becomes too big to jump.

2. NHS – Neat Hospital Shit.

This month I endured general anaesthetic for the first time. It was a routine procedure administered one hundred percent free, gratis and for nothing on the NHS – that last, bustling but loveable vestage of a British socialist backbone that has long since succumbed to early-onset neo-liberal crumbling. It is still the largest employer in Europe, I was born and (god willing if it’s still here then) will die in its hospitals, and the National Health Service is the indirect benefactor of my life having also paid my Dad to dispense what is admittedly, these last few years, a bulging mountain of daily methadone scripts as a ‘community chemist’ in our native South Wales for his entire pharmaceutical career. Aneurin Bevan, the creator of the reforms that saw the introduction of this national free-for-everyone framework, was also, incidentally, a lovely Welsh man with a valleys lilt. One of the first things I was handed on my resurfacing into the world, by the kindly nurse, along with a biscuit and some juice, was a newspaper which detailed news of Obama’s healthcare reforms. The circumstances and real arguments are beyond my knowledge but the bizarre cell-based judgements handed out to Americans who for whatever reason get ill then can’t afford their treatment made me stop feeling sorry for myself sharpish, sitting as I was, in my free bed with my free juice and my new, polyp-free sinuses.

3. Four good songs for Spring

Anyway, since all i’ve been doing is popping codeine (all prescription drugs are also free – regardless of who you are if you live in Wales, thanks devolved left-leaning government – or free if you live in England and can prove you’re poor enough, which isn’t hard right now…) I’ve been listening to songs over and over again and proselytizing weirdly, as you’ll see. Cram this mini-mix hypothetically into your earholes for Easter and beg for mercy…jesus is dead, the pope, says the papers, is some manner of paedo, so let’s party.

Lack of Knowledge – Danger to Life.

I downloaded this LP by accident, late pass on a lot of this Crass Records stuff that isn’t Crass, the most, most pleasurable surprise. Androids of MU! Honey Bane! And the best thing is you’re not unlikely to come across some of these records in most of the more neglected charity shops around London (american friends perhaps you call this ‘thrifting’, you’re gross) anyway, Lack of Interest are an interesting group. Pretty much everything that it had always bugged me that was kind of lacking from Joy Division is distilled into these detailed intelligent tunes (in the good way, not the ‘feels like it needs to explain itself separately’ way) They have those style buzz-AND-howl basslines, a bit of new wavey stomp to them and lots of pointed lyrics about girls working in factories, mountains of black bags, diatribes reminiscent of Crisis with A-levels. It sounds like urban trauma and grey faces, weird guitar twinkle that puts you all off kilter, then expanding into awesome sudden upbeat climax in the way that does sure remind of that Ian Curtis in his more open mouthed seizure songs, but like I said…better. This tune starts with a fucking air raid siren, don’t tell me it’s not perfect.

Neon Blud – Sophomore Blud

Now I’m not being funny but this band sounds like fucking No Trend with a teenage girl singer, caught me absolutely by surprise (was expecting more ‘woah dudes, aren’t we like, so unsettling and deranged and shit bro?’ and all that cheaply executed novice pedal pushing post-first-Cult-ritual-demo impersonal impersonator steeze) but the whole of the Whipps CS is so lucid and on point, colourful and noisy as shit in a considered way, this could be Born Against for the first twenty seconds, until the vocalist kicks, quite literally, in, and it could be The Wrecks or Nog ­Watt. I’d kill for physical copy of the tape, so smack my thigh and call me a hypocrite but this is just incredibly good quality, contemporary, awesome.

Non-Band – Duncan Dancin’

I don’t know that much about this all-girl band beyond that it was the stand-out track on a mix, released in 1982, I got but the shouty Japanese vocals literally sound like the baby voice I use to talk to animals (lots of plosives and eee-ing) which make it great. Post punk, bass and sax and lots of space. Brilliant bedroom dancing, which I WILL now be able to actually do without fear. Yes, the man who the crazy lady that I live with has chosen to move in is doing so as I type this, he shares an adjoining wall with a set of double doors set into it with me that I have ’sound proofed’ (badly) because I was warned he was doing a doctorate and would NOT appreciate my NOISE. However, upon making the gent a cup of tea, he revealed he used to play sax. As aforementioned loonette is a jazz-obsessive, I assumed that was his passion too, so imagine my joy and relief (I don’t get jazz really, I pretend when necessary though) when he said ‘Er, more, like, punk sax really, making noises here and there, problem is you can’t get too excited or nothing comes out.’ Maybe thats what happened with Non-band, the sparseness was hyperventilation! Joy of joys though, looks like I can unstaple the duvet from the door. On further pressing, he used to hang out on the Kings Road, frequent Legends, wear bondage gear from Sex and his best mate went out with Billy Idol. I embarrased myself with how excited I got. I have a new ally!

Hygiene – Organic Shopper

I’ve been getting massively paranoid that the music part of this column is sort of redundant cos hasn’t everyone heard everything these days… So, to balance the books, here is Hygiene – we put a record out by them and its so brilliant but I’m scared to say so to people for fear it’s one of those occasions where one is subject to deflected humility when you release something like to avoid sounding like a weak sales pitch/self-aggrandisement. Fuck it, this band is way, way ahead of most others in this vein (there are few, I think the Human Race are also great though – http://www.myspace.com/thehumanRACE) in the UK – I want to show some love to Hygiene because, lets be honest here, I’ve been too scared to interview them for the longest time due to the fact that their individual specialist subjects are so wide and deep in range that i’d need a particularly scorn-proof kayak to traverse it. One day I will do it and learn everything from how to make value judgements on a good pair of sta-prest, to well, lots of other really quite important things about football and critical theory. Anyway, they are kind of the transatlantic equivalent to Airfix Kits, both in terms of post punk jerkiness and having a singer who has the ‘wrong’ (but so right) accent given the sonic-geography / locational identity of the band. Nat’s Canadian but everything else is very not-North American, which is so refreshing in a period where London bands are in love with all those forgettable geometric West coast mindless fuzz-peddlers.) Live they’re more brooding, coming over like if Mark E. Smith was Jewish and visibly terrified. On the cusp between half half-time scrap and premeditated theoretically-validated violence, some kind of pogo chin stroke? The Real psycho mafia, cheap pub uppers, crushing grey sundays. I’m killing it by trying to explain it. Listen to their song about the National Front Tea Party. Sniff glue not ketamine.

[This was a late one, as is fairly obvious.]

I suck. This month my critical faculties have entered meltdown phase due to that annoying bug of everything happening at once, which has resulted in this here thing, normally a refuge to write in a sea of more pesky tasks, being left way late, then I even sent last month’s one thinking it had yet to arrive (what a schmuck) as there are very few outlets for this blessed paper in London, its hard to get hold of so I go on my failing memory to remember the difference between drafted, sent and published. Any raging inaccuracies (with regards to arguments and their actually standing up) I can put down to the fact I didn’t proofread, and thus somehow remove all culpability for my foolishness? Somehow. Part of my absconding from ‘real life’ and chucking in a mistaken attempt at careerism, thus losing the ability to organise my brain, has including taking on various temporary shift jobs, and i’ve been lucky enough to get some at some kind of interesting places, the British Museum for one and the Southbank Centre secondarily…

Anyway, it’s currently 8am, I worked a 13 hour shift yesterday, today I am dogsitting a swiss hound called Biagio who’s actually Italian (don’t ask) and going for a ‘meeting’ at a very important gallery to fake acting very important about doing scarily important things, then somehow go to work for another night, to serve ice creams and overpriced programmes to the Orchestral cognoscenti, that is to say, the aged Generation who still recognise the strains of Dvorak over the din. I work increasing amounts of shifts in the Royal Festival Hall, which is the part of the Southbank centre on the river here that looks most like a relic from brighter post-War period – It was built for the Festival of Britain, where it was constructed as a ‘tonic for the nation’. It’s a huge 3000 seat auditorium, a palimpsest to changing ideas of ‘innovative’ architecture, so that Brutalist post-war British concrete angularity juts out into the Thames, buffered only by more 1990s style attempts at water features and glass frontage. Underneath it is probably London’s most well known area to skateboard, but its all location scouts and mall grabs. It’s one of the few ‘cultural complexes’ in London to operate an ‘open foyer’ policy, and I find this, and how people react to it, endlessly fascinating. Lots of the walls on the lower floors are mirrored, which means, despite the overwhelming bias towards classical performance, in the Royal Festival Hall part at least (there are lots of other smaller spaces within the building) it is not an uncommon sight to see an impromptu troupe of criminally determined dancers staring at their synchronicity, bodypopping to this week’s ringtones (did that make me sound about fifty? Shit i’m so not ‘urban’) out of tinny mobile phone speakers. Over and over again for sometimes far longer than my shift lasts. Patrons mostly just widen their eyes and step daintily over tracksuit bottoms to make it through to their £60 seats. That said, management recently rearranged a set of ‘lazy chairs’ to make it so that a certain area was less attractive to homeless people, which shows something of a less laissez-faire attitude, but it’s not uncommon to find a sleeping bag stuffed in a corner, jettisoned for more reliable heat. Still, it shuts at 11pm.

The staff at the Royal Festival Hall are an incredible testament to the over-qualification of service industry staff in this country, symptomatic of all that implies, but it produces this bizarre situation where the staff cloakroom becomes a contact zone for all kinds of amazing conversation about people’s ‘real work.’ Everyone is writing or doing or making between shifts. Mostly graduates or practitioners in their field trying to supplement meagre income, art theorists work next to choreographers, electronic musicians next to confused punks (hi.) United by precarity and smiling in the face of time-sheets and queue management duty, I snag my fingers on illustrious patrons arty coats, make small talk about a man unbeknownst to me before I began work there: Yevgeny Sudbin, a young Russian virtuoso pianist and favourite of the old ladies who have season tickets, including an amazing woman who was tiny and smelt of pine cones, who told me she ‘just wanted to touch him.’ Amazing. I don’t complain, because last week I got to watch John Cale perform the entirety of Paris 1919 for free (the programme’s not entirely classical) its actually really easy work and it dampens my wider guilt at being agency staff in a unionised environment to know that noone seems to resent it. Work is a strange beast, work on the front line of the UK’s much-vaunted (yet slowly subsiding into the economic mud) ‘cultural sector’ stranger still.

So the dog has just realised that his mirror image is not just another dog and is going mental. This is going to be fun. His ears are literally bigger than his head. Amongst the world of things I need to do is book flights to Austin Texas for a little festival I don’t think anyones going to, and then a connecting flight to SF for a month of honourary shitwork. I couldn’t be more excited! If you or anyone you know is subletting or has a spare room, attic, half a room or shed (!) anywhere in the general bay area I guess, for around a month and wouldn’t mind the company of a baffled Brit, I’d be really interested to hear from you. I decided I had to stay until at least that Eddy Current show or I’d never forgive myself, so I’ll be around til July, but I can always head back to my old haunt, the fuh-fuh reaky filmset gothic of permanently empty hostel El Capitan. Fear. I’m really quite nice most of the time, do a good mushroom and cashew strudel and put the seat down. Seriously, please get at me on bryonybeynon@gmail.com

A final note: When mysterious guy hardcore has a Facebook group and the Youth Attack store sells t-shirts made from bin liners (how-you-say.. trash bags?) it’s possibly time to admit the mystique you’re crying out for will not be found in manufactured rarity, codified hype, cassette tapes you’ll never play, or some digital cash flow for the gotta-catch-em-all pokemon punks. Please kill me.. as a wise man once said.

[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

1. The beard in my life and I took a trip to berlin last week, we have never been so cold before or indeed since…the last time I was in berlin. Minus thirteen. That’s intense when you come from a country that empties its collective bowel (its up to you to pick a county to defile at this point by implying that THAT VERY ONE is the bowel in question) at the sign of some frost. Said Bearded boy’s eponymous facial accessory was all crunchy from icey spit. But hey, warm hearted folk more than made up for it, we shared a living room with sociopathic house rabbit named pok. carried on my irrational obsession with photographing every holiday meal I eat, and this time we ate a whole lot of them. The city is beyond good for vegan options – particular recommendations are Yoyo world in Friedrichshain (hawaiian pizza!) and Vux cafe in Neukolln, for all your Brazilian-inspired cake and bagel needs – with insane things like guava jam in them. No meat, no dairy, no fucking about. Too tasty. Seek them out, and go buy records from Bis Auf’s Messer, I got The Anals 7” and moreover, really like the sensation of browsing records in someones front room, complete with huge cellar door that nearly claimed my young life due to overzealous tape browsing. Thanks Emma and Joe!

2. I was trying to think of musical commonalities shared by most people I know (I work a job that involves lots of staring at walls) and my main conclusion was that I seriously don’t feel like I know a lot of folk who aren’t dealing with a sliding scale of general obsession with Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Testament to this is my having to buy up all four copies of the Goner repress of the first LP when it showed up briefly in Rough Trade East, even at £16 each. Whether it’s a kind of long term slow burn every-evening-after-work record or sudden infatuation (see the song ‘Precious Rose’) for you, I heartily recommend you join us. I recently read that the singer is also a well-known graffiti writer and gallery-showing-type artist as well, and an animist, which I think is something weird about spirits, as if their whole mystique even needed any further propping up. They’ve got me wearing weird gloves at all the most inappropriate moments. At least I can now take comfort knowing I’m not the only one that finds myself howling in a frankly un-pc approximation of that nasal bogan-baiting drawl ‘I deserve, my dessert, uh uh ughhhh, cool ice cream!’ On a Melbourne-related note, can someone please make sure that MV and Steve, both sizeable chunks of my life-support system that have just upped and moved to your city (in a funny repeat of when my parents did the exact same thing five years ago, thanks life!) are both being looked after, oh and get them to buy me a Diamond Sea record? All I see are heavy skies. YES!

3. Bear with me here as I know this sounds like I need a slap and a quick listen to the Cro-Mags (this is normally true regardless), but Tunisian yé-yé music is actually incredible. Nothing moreso than the 1967 legit hit by a woman (although she was no doubt marketed as une petite fille) called Jacqueline Taieb, called ‘7 heures du matin’, that has a The Who-pastiche ‘g.g.g..eneration’ interlude that is probably the sexiest thing to be recorded in le langue d’amour since…oh no wait, Serge Gainsbourg was a total creep. I started researching yé-yé, apparently Gainsbourg was behind some of it but still, think of this as more like a Shangri-las for your younger sister, after she’s been necking cough syrup and fapping furiously. Apologies if you actually have a younger sister and feel a bit weird now.

4. Guinea Kid – demo (repressed recently on not normal tapes) I really, really like this even though it has that slightly confused out-of-place last song thing going on that you occasionally get on demo tapes where the songwriting cohesion has fallen down and there is, in the case of this tape, a cringey breakdown half-timey bit in the last tune, that jars rather sharply with the other songs – tastefully assembled skummy hardcore with the correct amounts of both squall and scree that requires. I have to say I kind of like that the icky tune is on there, though, because it lends an (I’mm cringing at myself here) authenticity that gets me thinking (probably totally inaccurate) they maybe have a longhaired drummer to appease, that is still way into sports metal or something. And that’s cool. Anyway, Guinea Kid may be way overhyped by now, but fucked if i knew that, I stumbled upon this and would recommend checking it out. In an age where so many clamor to be bored of even the most unavailable punk, it’s nice to hear a genuine rag bag of referents that actually rages, and is surely better than the thousands of message board derivatives with ‘i wanna do a band that sounds like blah blah blah-syndrome’ from the usual places exercising levels of stylistic fascism that only serve counter a lot of their own potential.

5. Cold Wave the genre and Cold Cave the apparent ‘band.’ I say stem the tide of mediocrity and resist this reprehensible guff.

6. Completed an almost-sentimental-if-I-wasn’t-so-happy-about-it bank transfer last month, in that I drip fed my last pound of the Queen’s money (well, mine…) into the nefarious and frankly parasitic legion of shit hawks that make up the buy-to-let property market in this country, and paid my last month’s rent to a private landlord. I’ve just moved into one of 8 houses that are part of a housing cooperative in North London, a fact that I still can’t quite believe as they are by no means common here, and this one has an incredible history which I’m going to detail hopefully in the next Modern Hate Vibe by interviewing my ‘housemate’, a 60 year old chain-smoking lefty archaeologist that is both bang on awesome and my buddy’s mum. She and her pals squatted the whole block in the late 70s and has been here ever since, in spite of the wider ravages of Thatcherite reality. Speaking to longer term residents it seems maybe they feel some of the realities of cooperative living can themselves be less than golden, but i’m really hoping i can bring some idealism-borne-of-ignorance to the equation and maybe help spark a little progress where it’s needed. Exciting times!

7. I’m off to cement my simultaneous statuses as world’s coolest auntie and most chastised sister (they asked for transfer tattoos after my last visit, UH OH) by giving my four year old niece ruby her christmas present, her first skateboard. I hope she’ll thank me in twenty years time.

8. I like all music with swagger and balls, send me some at my new house and I will send you some toenails or something, possibly taped to a cassette. Modern Hate Vibe, 12 Richmond Ave, London N1 0NF

Thanks! bryony.beynon@gmail.com // Bryony http://www.bigtakeover.co.uk

I CAN’T TAKE IT NO MORE, I’M BUGGIN’ OUT.

I’m marching out of revolving glass doors on the ground floor of the building I work in. Worked in. It’s the sixth of July 2009 and I have just quit my job to go on tour with the Shitty Limits. In this weirdly unBritish helter-swelter, London feels like holiday. Stepping out onto Leicester sq I seem to have entered some kind of parallel world. Hordes of determined looking youth are jostling for space, crowding around the steps of my work. Getting closer I can see they’re school kids. All from different schools, seemingly? They’re shouting. I am disorientated and a bit disturbed, until it becomes obvious what’s going on. Leicester square is London’s crap version of Sunset Blvd, a ‘cinema quarter’, much less cultural than that sounds, and these are harry potter fans, hundreds of them. Dogged with a look of steely defiance mixed with exhaustion, they’re all Hogwarts colours, handmade everything and underdeveloped ribs pressed against the barriers, preemptively rolled out, as they do for every Tom , Dick and Jonas brother. Lightning bolts gouged into tweenage foreheads. Radcliffe and related cartel aren’t due for a good six hours. It’s fucking tribal. Three girls I lock eyes with are crying. Already. This is fandom. I get on my bike. We could really learn something.

I’m flummoxed, really. Everyone else may have Better records, bigger cities wilder times. I wish I could write like Brace but frankly I don’t have the liver for it. I tried to think about what I know about. After some serious brain defrag, it’s been decided: other than heavy interest in (not always backed up by knowledge of) my two specialist subjects: New York hardcore and Thomas Pynchon, all I’ve really learnt in the last two years is related to the job I have just quit. There’s a peculiar terror in that, but hey, a little background: Aged fifteen, yes I had a skateboard, but it was cheap, I was/am clumsy, the boys just thought I was stupid, so instead as a bored teenagers do these days, I got good at using the computer. somewhere between graduating a degree in English and Cultural Studies (the study of whatever you bloody well please) and the dole queue (they don’t even really make you queue) I got told there might be money in all that screen time. I sunk my freakishly small, blunt teeth into that, and to cut to the chase, spent eighteen months of my young adult life working in a public relations firm. This became reading and writing about ‘digital and social media engagement’ (amongst many other marginally less vacuous, more intensely technological things) for one of London’s top firms. I went to events, stood on the sidelines of this whole new weird subculture of blogger meetups (subcultural only in as much as ‘the wider populace would think you’re a fucking moron’) and smiled at the men and women there: mostly jolly, but deeply desperate, weirdly promiscuous functioning alcoholics comparing smartphones and revelling in a who’s who of status-update status-anxiety. There were moments when I started to believe it, present it, the bosses liked it. They viewed me as putting an amiable face to the blind panicked fear that these ‘new channels’ and represented to thousand greasy execs – turning bilious and pale as they realised this might be one hurdle too far. One week I trained fifty people how to use fucking fucking fucking twitter, saddened as they gripped hard at their employability in the face of not-so-empty threats from management about new requirements to be a ‘digital native’.

I started to reach capacity. resentment bubbled over as I heard my own mouth spout more and more convincingly about ‘viralising’ and ’seeding.’ It’s no accident that these terms bring to mind some kind of dribbling heinous future semen; dried up, impotent and full of dead ideas. Smeared it all over everything that is ostensibly useful about the internet, giving it that predictable echo chamber glisten. Everytime some ‘blogger’ typed, it was fodder for a brand awareness graph, algorithms to measure sentiment. Me. My mother, the woman who, some seven years ago, executed a military level u-turn on discovering pink hair dye in amongst her 16 year olds daughters purchases on the way home from the shops, now responds to my plaintive moans at being effectively trapped in a world of vacuous pricks, with her honeyed intones of ‘but Bryony, you’re a punk, you’re meant for better than all this.’ Head hits palm. did I hate every second? no, but I’m tormented by how lucky I am every day anyway (so should you be), so I’ll tick off the ability to piss bile about choices I made for myself as another middle class privilege. I guess. Time off to play shows and do other real things felt like lovely, monochrome relief from the 56 million colours bombarding information super duper next level two-dot-oh-god-please-no world of my work. I’d always tutted inwardly at the ‘9 to 5 admin hate my job’ overtones of the messageboard addicted mid 30s punks, I thought it was a clever ruse, that having a ‘real’ career to go with the label and the band and the shows would be a lucrative accoutrement, the punkest jugglers act, but only dropped balls ensued, and there are some things not up for sacrifice. I can still make things with codes but all that shit loses its lustre when you have to deliver fifty deck power point slides on what some dipshit blogger who can’t fucking spell said about adidas. or hamleys. or business process management software. I’m not kidding. I’m on the run. digitally. and I hate how that sounds too. knowing how SEO works (aka the ability to terminally scupper myself by having an unusual real life name) only makes me more determined. still, even under duress, you try saying the anonymous onandonandonanist. Viralise that, fuckheads.
Despite my nose-as-viewfinder talk here, to my employers, it seems I dipped out graciously with the promise of an MA (I got an unconditional offer but its still five thousand pounds I don’t have) and by the time this is published, I guess will be penniless and shaped like a human burrito after three weeks with Logic Problem and the Shitty Limits. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same. While the clear desk policy puts paid to grandiose ’shit on it and run’ notions, I’m working out my notice with clenched fists and resolutely leaving this particular breed of suckers in their rancid gold dust. Wilfully, then, this is the new poor. This is the new poor. And without a proper job I guess I’ll be sticking to tar babies mp3s, and patch up my self-worth, whichever way.

Last night (fresh wounds fyi) I put a hardcore punk gig on in an arch under London Bridge station. I called it Big Takeover. It was a mixed bill (Logic Problem, Shitty limits, Mob Rules, Black Time, Ironclad and Nowhere Fast ) I made it all ages, bring your own booze, and 200 people showed up. There are reasons why all of this is unusual, much of which I think I covered in that scene report, but that’s all by the by. What was, to attendees, by all accounts, a night to rejuvenate something that’s been lacking here for a long time, was, for me, the promoter, irrevocably marred by constant harrasement from the venue owner, who seemed like a ‘regular’ guy (who responded to london’s version of craigslist with news of an empty space that may be ’suitable for my event’) but revealed himself that night to be nothing short of an absolute wanker. I’ve dipped toes into the stagnant water that is putting on gigs over the last five years, but nothing to compare to this in terms of scale. I was excited, energised. I put up a 500 pound (what, like 850 dollars?) damage deposit. I was an idiot.

So now, this venue guy is sending threatening emails, wanting to withhold my damage deposit plus bill me thousands. We stayed ’til three am cleaning and that place was spotless. There’s no more than 100 worth of ‘damage’ – including labour. I hate him, I hate him. I hate that he treated me so differently to my taller, maler friends who reasoned with him so easily. I hate that I let myself feel threatened. That I started to feel like this was too much for one person. I hate that I couldn’t see any of the bands because he was shouting in my ear the whole night, that I couldn’t catch up with the people who’d travelled. That people got turned away. That I was still trying to be pleasant to him as he snakes an arm around my waist and thanks me for doing his washing up with a weird snarl. I made one thousand two hundred pounds and gave every penny to the bands because that’s the way I wanted to do things, only to be told that I should have kept it, to deal with this eventuality. That a man who runs a space banging on about health and safety, shouting in my face, should think that a rusty screw for the main door handle is acceptable. One of my sillier friends, wasted and backed up with the ultimate ‘its a punk rock show’ illegitimate defense, threw a cymbal stand at head height into the crowd. I was distraught as we bundled the guy (he was from France and it was his first show in London, great time) into a cubicle. Venue guy barged in, threw a first aid kit (complete with scissors) at my face and stormed out. so he’s screaming in my face as the injured party pisses blood up the toilet wall, staring me down and blocking my path and I am a five foot five twenty three year old woman that has given him half her monthly salary, and he is a sociopathic, dishonest, powertripping, cringy, fucking, bastard. Oh and a secret christian, I found a ringbound notebook on a desk in his office, with a crucifix daubed on the front in tippex (maybe you call it whiteout) the book was full of prayers scrawled in a disjointed cursive he’s all ‘dear god, i won’t enjoy tonight, but don’t let me fuck it up’ – I clench weaker fists at 2am whilst my best friends clean his floor and he shouts at them about the best way to wield a mop, then thinks he’s being funny asking my friend Keg if he’s ‘the token asian?’ He’s claiming I’m in breach of a contract I never signed, that too many people were there, that I’m responsible for the guys that pissed in the street. For the ‘nuisance’ caused to neighbours who were hanging out with my friends outside. My friend Jen is a doctor, and even he knew better than her, because calling the ambulance when the French guy started to pass out was ‘putting his business in jeopardy’. GAH. Still, I went to a show the next night and there were kids there who’d never been before, who’d picked up flyers at Big Takeover, who were kinda wide eyed and wanted to say hi. Maybe it’s trite to say so, and I’m no martyr, but if it made anyone at all feel like there’s something left of punk in this city more than brand-backed indie, free-association fuzz hipsters and the odd irono-DJ, it might all end up being worth it. For now i’ll stay incandescent and penniless.

A word in your shell-like (some UK-OK recommendations): Read Futility Exercise #1 and crank proudly, listen to Black Mamba Beat and burn your boat shoes, get the Kingdom of fear 7” compilation and basically just slamdance, watch Phoenix Nights with some garlic bread, listen to Sex Dungeon and do the Fritzl stomp. I’m going to America tomorrow, when this is in print (scary) I’ll be back, so I hope you said hello. http://onandonandonanist.blogspot.com/ bryony.beynon@gmail.com