Remember Me Now, Things Always Change

 A question that I've often asked friends is if there is a band whose logo they would get tattooed on their body. Not a tattoo of the band, like lyrics or a design related to album artwork, which would obviously be tied to your personal and individual relationship with a piece of art, but literally just getting the logo of a band tatted. I feel like that dramatically reduces the field of bands that would get chosen, because you, as a fan, get less say about what you would put on you. Lord knows I loved Less Than Jake for long enough to consider getting a tattoo of the band, but would I get their script logo or the Evo Kid? Both suck.

I feel like this issue isn't the same for non-punks, let alone non-music nerds. I know lots of people get classic rock and rap tattoos, but I think that getting a straight-up band logo put on you is more about you aligning yourself with the band's ideals and message for a punk than it is expressing your love for their music. I guess, writing all this out now, that same is true for metalheads, though I just think that's less cool because metal bands are, broadly, dumber and have a less radical worldview to express. Duff told me he would consider the Hüsker Dü logo (great choice), I know a guy with the Bad Religion crossbuster on his elbow, and the Black Flag bars are ubiquitous.

For me? I've long said Operation Ivy is the only logo I would get tattooed, though I think getting that in my late-30s zaps a lot of the youthful optimism and naivety that a band logo suggests. Still, I listened to Energy the other day and singing along to "Jaded" still felt the same and evoked the same feelings as it did when I was a teenager. For the moment, I'm happy to hold that feeling and power inside of me and draw upon it when it feels important.

I've been on a big Bouncing Souls kick for the last week, alternating between the albums I really like, How I Spent My Vacation and Gold Record, and a playlist of deep cuts I made called "Hold Onto 2 What U Got." I feel like orgcore is definitively dead now and as I listen to the Souls I feel like it's obvious that they were a bigger influence on that subgenre than they ever got credit for. Bands always cited Jawbreaker or Dillinger Four as their touchpoints, but those two bands were idiosyncratic and political in ways that their imitators never were. Listening to later Souls stuff, like "Lean on Sheena" and "Ghosts on the Boardwalk" it's obvious that 1) the simple major chord progression with a high single note lead and belted chorus was exactly what the Menzingers made a career off of and 2) the Souls even did it way better than the youngs bands in the late 10s. 

*One night Brian and Pat were on shrooms and had a transcendental experience watching this video.

I thought about saying that the Souls incorporating a Springsteen approach to songwriting later in their career was an unbelievable pivot in sound, but when you listen to their great early songs, like "Kate is Great" and "Say Anything," there's such a wonderful sensitive and earnest point of view expressed in the songs. Greg Antonito is able to walk the tightrope while writing about relationships good and bad in which he invites you into an episode of his life rather than trying to vent frustrations about a breakup. This aspect of the band might have gotten emphasized more as they turned more anthemic and melodic in the 00s, but it was always there. I guess instead I would say that the little bit of hardcore and skin culture that's incorporated into the band is actually the special something. Terminally underrated band and grateful to have seen them many times over the years.

There's No Control, Just Controlling Yourself

 Without checking, I feel like the great IMU hiatus of 2022-26 covered the time that I went to go see Militarie Gun, MSPAINT, Pony, and Spite House with my friends Val, Dave, and Anna. Looking back on it now, it was definitely one of my favourite shows I've been to, primarily because I had never heard of MSPAINT before the show and they absolutely blew Val and I away that night. Absolutely nothing better in the world than discovering a band live and knowing that they will be a favourite for years to come. We were outside smoking in front of Turbo Haus and our weed drinks were starting to hit. The band was so good that we said "We should probably head in" just from they way they sounded through a closed door outside. We talked about how good they were for the entire bike ride home. 

I never expected them to get to this level, but I do earnestly daydream about how friends would react if they saw this band live. I wish friends could have the same experience I did. The No Separation EP is the most recent thing they've done and somehow I am desperate for more, despite it coming out last year. Not on tour right now, so am I safe to assume to they're working on something? A boy can dream.

So I Can Erase the Rat

I was recently reminded of the Long Island ska-core band The Fad after listening to their seminal track "Vinyl Paradise" on an old playlist of mine.* Their lone full-length record, Kill Punk Rock Stars was on constant rotation for me when it came out, is absolutely one of my favourite records of the 00s, and still stands as one of my favourite ska-punk albums, especially when you consider that it came out in a real fallow period for the genre. I had a great time listening to the record for the first time in a few years and found that this time, the track that really stuck with me was "Ska-boom!"

*This song was my profile song on MySpace for like half the time I used the website.

Obviously, when you read that title you assume the worst about it being a terrible ska-punk song with a terrible ska pun title, but that's a purposefully metatextual move. The song is about the singer being present for the ska boom of the late-90s and then watching people dump the genre like it was nothing and then act like they were never into. He then calls for others to "light the fuse" again and reinvigorate the genre, which, if you are thinking of the New Tone era of ska from 2018ish-2024ish, The Fad absolutely contributed to. Beyond loving that message, and I don't think I need to get into a comparison of being into ska and 00s scene metalcore for the hundredth time, I think there's a lot of value in the earnest message of saying that participated in the third wave ska boom and then never left and tried to keep that scene alive. The opening line of the song is "I was there," and I found that really resonated me as a beautiful statement about participating in a music scene. We all have traces of our participation in DIY music to varying degrees, the records and zines we made, the flyers of shows we played and attended, but ultimately "I was there" is the most important thing you can say about it. If you can say "I was there" it means that you did something and helped to build the scene instead of staying home.

While poking around on Discogs, I found out that Ricky from the Fad played in Backtrack for that band's whole existence. A fun discovery that I never made even as I listened to Backtrack the whole time they were active. This is also evidence that all of punk's independent music scenes are way closer than most want to admit. To me it's 1) obviously cool that the Fad and Backtrack share members, as it also explains why they were better than 95% of ska-core bands, and 2) not that weird! Kind of makes sense to me when you think about Long Island punk and hardcore! That led me to listen to his recent appearance on Toby Morse's One Life, One Chance podcast, interested to see if he mentioned the Fad. He touched on them a little bit, talking about joining the band and going on tour, and even more interestingly, mentioning that he started Backtrack after he and another member quit the Fad. So Backtrack is a Fad side project! Hmmm (I kid). 

Something that did bum me out a little bit was that he described the band as "more punk," instead of copping to the fact that he played in a ska band for multiple years and put out a full-length with them. Perhaps he didn't want to lose cred when talking to Matt Henderson, who was co-hosting the interview. I get it, but don't be ashamed to say "I was there."*

*For all I know, they could have talked about that extensively off-mic or something.

The Tubs have been one of my most-listened-to bands of the summer and they just put out a new record. I don't know if it surpasses their first one as my favourite of theirs, but it's great and I've really enjoyed having some new songs from the band to throw into the mix. "Stoop to Me" was the first single, but I found that with the rest of the album out too, it works for me in a way it didn't before. Just an absolutely wonderful band. Through them I've dug into the God Nation family of bands more and have found that most of it rocks (especially Spike and the TSG). This sounds like a diss, but I mean it very sincerely when I say it reminds me of the K-W scene in a good way. Kind of hard to articulate why, when I think it's around a lot of people doing a lot of completely different sounding things. Perhaps that's how I heal my own scene trauma.

I Just Screwed Up My First Bikini Contest, That's All

After hearing that Andy Williams, guitarist of Every Time I Die, died last weekend, and upon seeing all of the posts on social media eulogizing him, I felt compelled to write something myself. I then kept putting it off and it feels a little strange to write something about that now, but perhaps that's a sign that rather than just leaving it, I should push myself to actually do that.

Got to admit that I haven't really listened to Every Time I Die for the last 15 or so years but I don't want to give the impression that the band is an old guilty pleasure or something I try to to erase from my musical past. There were two years or so in my early twenties that Brian, Pat, and I, but especially Pat and I, loved Every Time I Die deeply. I bought New Junk Aesthetic shortly after it came out at the Stone Road Mall HMV and that served as my introduction to the band. I wouldn't say that I was new to hardcore at the time at all, but I was very much still exploring and learning about different permutations of the genre. Metalcore had really not jived with me at all and I was skeptical of Every Time I Die because they were scene adjacent in the 2000s. That's certainly an association that is downplayed now, but absolutely was there then. My ska kid-based aversion to every associated with 2000s third wave emo and screamo drove me away, but I quickly found that Hot Damn! was really good and really hard.

Something else that was a huge part of Pat and I's love for the band was the party vibe that the band put forward in their DVDs, Shit Happens and The Dudes and Don'ts of Recording, and on their social media. Beyond that, the idea of being a boozy hardcore luthario was also in their lyrics and part of the image of the band. We didn't have any responsibilities in our early twenties and wanted to pound cheap beer like Keith and Jordan Buckley and call each other on shinfo and play the Shitty Snack Game. The two of us really adopted the party guy persona and had a lot of fun staying out late and trying to be silly. We both grew out of it fairly quickly, and I'm glad we did, but it would also be disingenuous to act like a big part of our youth was dominated by the band.

An obvious difference between me and the huge amount of people who eulogized Williams online is that they had personal relationships with him, from touring and playing shows, and I didn't at all. I don't want to act like I knew the guy in any real way, or even act like he had an impact in life in a real way. But the more I saw people posting about how kind and genuine Andy was, the more I realized that what I was actually moved by was everyone else's mourning and outpouring of emotion. I sort of knew already that the band, but especially Andy, were big for other people. but his death prompted everyone to show that in a material way. Hardcore is a community that loves to gossip and throw shit at each other probably more than every other in the world. When someone dies, people rush to say something edgy or be the contrarian that is brave enough say that a person sucked. That didn't happen in this case and maybe that alone is cause for celebration.

Was recently reminded of this album by the San Diego band The Cry.

I listened to it a bunch a few years ago and in researching the band, learned that they came and went quickly with almost no press or media footprint, which is increasingly rare with the internet giving us access to archives everywhere. What was cooler is that almost every person who knows them learned about them from H-Street's Hocus Pocus video and the band was closely tied to skate culture. Great stuff, and Anthony Pappalardo speaks about that with more authority here.

Stranger to Blue Water

I was on a minor John Denver kick earlier this week, which basically entailed listening to the hits the album Rocky Mountain High. On my way into the Faubourg working space, I thought about a few conversation prompts that might be fun to go over with friends there. One was John Denver: Is he cringey good, in that his songs suck but contain nuggets of goodness that make the cringeyness endearing, or is he actually good? Ultimately I never got to mentioning that, because it's a dumb thing to talk about and no one would have cared, but I have been pondering on it for a few days. When I couldn't stop singing "Country Roads," I leaned toward the latter, but there are many stinkers in his music. It's actually like 60% stinkers. A few days later, out of the Denver kick, I think I'm back to the former. 

Really, the fact that one option is longer and more complicated probably means that's the one, right?

I occasionally feel the need to debase myself and tell the most embarrassing stories from my past. I think it's a way for me to be okay with previous versions of myself. If I embrace my corniness, and lord knows I've been insanely corny in the past, then I think I get better handle on who I am now. I think it makes me more kind to others if I think about times I've been stupid or embarrassing or immature. That's the way I think of it anyway.

On that note, and thinking about John Denver, I feel the need to say that after my first breakup, I listened to "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and an embarrassing amount. Not even just that I thought "Leaving on a Jet Plane" was deeper than anyone gave it credit for, because I just got dumped and the girl when on a trip to the UK, but that I spent most nights in my room in the basement of the house I shared listening to that song and "Nothing Compares 2 U" constantly. Feels like if that was a scene in a sitcom it would be too on the nose.

During the height of my obsession with "Leaving on a Jet Place," my house hosted 4/20 party. I was in the middle of taking a long break from smoking weed at the time, since I thought that it made my mental health worse and I was down bad. My solution to a crowd of mostly hot girls coming over to smoke weed at my house was to, in the genius of my early twenties, drink for the entire day. People started filtering into our house in the early afternoon and at that time I was making myself a giant sandwich in the kitchen to fill up my stomach for the day ahead. As I had done for each of the last 4 weeks, to our communal speaker in the kitchen and put on "Leaving on a Jet Plane by John Denver while I made food. My roommates were used to this. It had become my theme song for the previous month and this was a normal experience for them. All of the girls who had come over, however, we're kind of confused. I heard one ask in a loud voice after she had just taken her first toke out of a bong, "Why are we listening to this type of music? Can we put on something more fun?"

In that moment, I was a little hurt, not just because it was "my song" at that moment, or whatever, but also because, for some reason, I thought that overly sentimental populist folk music from the 70s was good smoking music. Insane take in hindsight. If we had just put on some mainstream rap music, though the situation in 2009 was pretty dire, maybe that party would have gone better for all of us. In hindsight, I think a lot of things would have been helped by me learning to just chill a bit in my early 20s, but that prob true of a lot of us, isn't it?

Lastly, I always thought it was "missed the taste of moonshine" not "misty taste of moonshine." Isn't the former more evocative? I think so.