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!