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!

About three years ago i was on the dole (job seekers allowance.) i’d just finished a course learning to teach english as a foreign language and was feeling pretty pleased with myself / like i deserved a rest after zero educational breaks between age 3 and age 21. my housemate ralph and i would subsist on a diet of free tofurkey schnitzels and purdy’s multivitamin juice from the holland and barrett down the road (when company policy is don’t lock eyes they might be dangerous, then every one is a delicious winner) i had a gigantic room, staying up until 8.30am was totally legit, and you could see the sea from my bedroom. what came out of these months, otherwise lost to binbags full of empty cans, was modern hate vibe.

ISSUE ONE – Completed the first week of december, 2007

this is what i said about it at the time (i used to write in an annoyingly slangy way, i’ve tried to curb that)

“shit is getting ragged. its freezing outside, shoes are soaked, no amount of gravy can heal this. xerox salvation is on its way, modern hate vibe issue one, a fanzine in the fine tradition, high contrast black white and nasty. expect nice design and rude talk. i’m starting off local(ish), interviews with shitty limits and cold ones, some insight on the overrated/venerated/oughta-be-cremated holy trinity of opinion forming, an informative how-to of hardcore tiers, diggin in the crates for the record nerdarious, and samples of the kinds of aimlessly bilious rants that are an everyday feature in our house”

there are none left. i’m a bit embarrased by it, but it’s out there. may reprint at some point.

After that, I moved to London.

ISSUE TWO – MHV ‘Chronicles of Gnarlier’ (Completed last week of July 2008)

I tried a bit harder with the interviews in this.

- Mob Rules
- DFJ (Mind Eraser)
- Ironclad

‘Columns’ if you will include amongst others:

- Review of the last Lintfabriek gig
- Panic on the streets of Brixton: South Wales to South London
- Five things I learnt from the Wu Tang Manual
- Why you should listen to Poison Idea
- Rinko Kikuchi, Lil Wayne and Chloe Sevigny
- Five things I learnt from the Anti-Matter Anthology
- Citalopram is the new Cocaine: Batshit Grans & The Flatline Generation
- A (Drunk) Treatise on ‘Saving’ Hardcore

I caught a reasonable amount of shit for some of the opinions in this, and generally felt a bit weirded out by its ‘reception.’ nothing that controversial, by most people’s standards. despite the fact that everyones got a messageboard opinion, i guess these zine starved times (in southern UK at least) meant that a lot of people took it to mean that if i’d bothered to ‘publish’ something, i thought my word was absolute truth. There are some left, I think.

ISSUE THREE MHV – Triceraflops/Fluxine (finished May 2009)

Interviews with:

Brian Walsby – Double Negative
Tommy Stupid – The Stupids
Chris Bickel – In/Humanity

I got into buying weird books about fluxus happenings, june paik, site specific art and all kinds of stuff i was trying to challenge my (by then half flayed from the below employment) brain into processing, so this zine was illustrated with that stuff. I didn’t try and write about it though. I got really gripey about referential hipperati, resulting in an article entitled ‘No renaissance: cutting through fuzz pop’s shit caked underbelly.’ Mediation on Immigration, Belgium as a state of mind (basically a shitty/sceptres tour report but hopefully less boring) lessons learnt from Crucifix.

I have just reprinted this one.

Including all fees and postage, paypal this address:

Including all fees and postage, paypal this address:
£1.50 in the UK
£1.80 in the EU
£2.20 to the US
£2.40 to CAN
£3.00 to AUS

ish. or buy it at shows, i always have some on me, they might be a bit dogeared. get in touch for everything else. i love trades. comment here.

number four will happen soon, like really, soon, honestly, ive only being saying that a year.

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.