Going Out West Vol 7 – The Last Update

Hey kids, so you know how I said I was gonna go see Bad Religion at the Sunshine Theater in Albuquerque last night. And I know I said I was gonna write this thing about Spray Paint The Walls and the OFF Videos and tie all three in. But I am sorry to say that shit is not going to happen. And I know yr all like “Dude, what the fuck? Seriously, I don’t come to this already crappy blog to read about your already boring ass vacation. Top that shit off with the fact that you’ve had the new Kid Cudi and Cee-Lo albums for over 24 hours and we haven’t seen you wax prolific on that science yet? What the fuck dude?” Well, let me address your concerns first and then I will rock my last update to you this morning.

The Sunshine Theater consistently got bad reviews both on the internet (see also here and here) and with the two random people I talked to about it. It seems it has really shitty sound and the staff is out of place most times with how they treat their patrons. At 33, I do not want to be intimidated by asshole kids who think being a prick is part of their job description. There is also no excuse for a poor sound system. Add to the fact that I saw Bad Religion ten years ago, after not listening to them for about 5-8 years and knew 95% of their songs and they weren’t that good then, and they have gotten progressively slower and older, passing just seemed like the right choice. I drank beer, ate nachos and watched a shitload of MTV2 who continually show reruns of Jackass which I fully endorse as the greatest thing ever committed to film, tape and digital video. 50 Year Old Punkers can not compete with hours upon hours of dudes hurting themselves.

As for the Kid Cudi and Cee-Lo albums, I haven’t even listened to them yet. I can’t hook my iPod up to the car I rented and listening in the hotel room is not optimal. There is something non-musical about hotel rooms. I don’t know what it is. But straight up, I will listen to the joints on the plane, make notes for you kids and have some stuff next week for you on those. I will review that Black Flag book and talk about those awesome OFF video’s that will hopefully still be up on the Vice site next week.

In regards to my stay out west, yesterday was a pretty good day. I woke up and rocked a huge breakfast at Little Anita’s which is across the street from me. It is the sister restaurant of Anita’s in Northern Virginia. The food here is honestly a lot better, mostly because the Green Chile out here is outrageous. It has heat and spice and tastes so good. I hope a steady diet of refried beans and chile is a good idea, because when I move here that’s probably all I am going to eat.

After that I headed to the Botanical Gardens, Aquarium and the Zoo. No joke I spent about 5 hours at these three places walking around, taking awesome pictures, smiling at and pushing away kids to get my shots and see cool shit. The Garden’s are a bit bo-bo right now, cuz you know it’s still winter here and not much grows. But it’s a rad set up. The BioPark as it’s called includes a creepy Children’s Fantasy Garden that set a lot of kids crying, an awesome outdoor model train setup, sweet ponds with ducks, and all kinds of other cool stuff. The Aquarium is small in comparison to a  lot of the great east coast ones, but they have a lot of crazy fish and a shark tank. So that’s pretty cool. Then I took a small train that goes to the Zoo by way of Tingley Beach, which seems to be a series of man made ponds for the kids. The Zoo rips, but the Polar Bear wasn’t there and I think I missed like half of it because it’s difficult to navigate and I lost my map and couldn’t find the entrance. Also I am now convinced that Giraffes are from another planet because they are awesome as shit.

After the BioPark visit I headed to a record store called Natural Sound. It was pretty decent, lots of used and new stuff, a little overpriced in the new release area and the selection was odd, but decent. Their used selection was okay and I did pick up a copy of Reject All American by Bikini Kill. If I was already there I would have hit up a few albums, but I don’t like traveling with vinyl or shipping it. The dude manning the counter was cool though and gave me some insight on the local music scene. So that was handy.

After all of this, like i said it was beer and nachos and a lot of TV which felt good. I think today I am going to go to Santa Fe and try and check out the Georgia O’Keeffe museum. There is also a Buddhist Temple out that way I want to check out. So I think that will be my day today. Then it’s probably back for dinner, get all cleaned up and ready for my late afternoon flight tomorrow, which sucks. I am ready to get back to Dixie, work on a few things and prepare for my return. Albuquerque has been pretty good to me so far. My adventures will continue, many of which will be brought to you here in this space. Keep it real folks.

On Riot Grrrl Books and White Male Privalege and Getting Older And Not Going to Punk Shows

Girls to the Front:The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution
Sarah Marcus
Harper Perennial

I’m a little fucked up at the moment. My anxiety has kicked itself into high gear tonight for some reason. There was this show in Columbia Heights tonight featuring Canada’s Burning Love who I really like and DC’s awesome and underrated and probably dead Deathrats. It’s probably Deathrats last show. I really should go since I am leaving Washington DC soon. People I want to see are gonna be there and it would be cool to see their faces one last time, enjoy some punk rock and try to relax. But seriously, just thinking about driving my car into yet another DC neighborhood that I don’t live and have no vested interest in on any kind of immediate level that are filled with people that have less privilege then I do just makes my heart race.

Originally this was not gonna get reviewed until I finished reading this book about Black Flag. I wanted to compare and contrast them, but this suddenly feels very urgent. As it’s been pretty well documented, I am a 33-year-old white, male from the suburbs of Washington DC in Northern Virginia. I went to a pretty great high school, got a college degree, worked a straight job for a decade and at one point owned my own home. I worked for a lot of this, but by no means did I struggle (at least not in the sense that the cards were stacked against me. One day, I will write my missive about the psychic destruction that a 9-6 office job induces on a soul, but that is for a later day, but still worth mentioning) to get to any of the standard, middle class milestones I managed to achieve. I think I may have successfully dropped out of these things now, the future will tell. However, punk rock leaves me in this very complex place. I am tired of my privilege continually contributing to the displacement of ownership of people who actually occupy the communities that punk rock exists in.

In the 18 or so years or so I’ve been going to shows that are off the beaten path, a great deal of them are held in spaces that are part of communities the organizers are not actually vested in. There are a lot of basement shows in houses filled with 20 something white kids that are surrounded by non-white people. These white kids often come from similar backgrounds as myself (not exclusively and it would be idiotic of you or me to assume that) but their race, and when it’s a bunch of white boys especially, provides them with certain allowances in society that their neighbors don’t often have. There are also a lot of spaces in these neighborhoods that are re-appropriated without exploring the traditional avenues. Now, I am not against the concept of squating or utilizing collective resources to create space out of abandon, neglected or forgotten buildings. I think it’s one of the beautiful things that punk rock ideas have. But in fact Sarah Marcus does a really great job of exploring just these facts with early nineties DC collective The Bee Hive.

For those not in the know, the Bee Hive was a dilapidated house on U Street in Washington DC that was “collectively” run by a bunch of idealistic punk kids. What these “radicals” probably failed to see is how their presence would ultimately effect that neighborhood. U Street in the 90′s was plagued with crime and drugs and basically forgotten by Bureaucratic Washington. But droves of white kids going to punk shows changed that. Now U street is mostly condos for the resurgence of white people who are now taking over DC. Marcus retells tails of this DC collective in her book. Her main point was to explore issues of race within the Riot Grrrl movement, but she easily shines a light on the bigger problem of race and punk rock. White kids entering into neighborhoods and fucking it up for the people who live there. Often they rarely actually integrate or attempt to be a part of the community. They just set up shop, implore upon each other with radical ideology, and watch as the neighborhood out affords even them.

Punk rock is idealistic, but it’s not realistic. It remains a white boys club of hedonistic, musical violence. It’s never really been about creating space, it’s always been about taking space. Any exploration into The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Black Flag or any of those mother bands is ripe with rhetoric about pissed off kids taking space. And while this is a grand and romantic gesture, the fact is this always comes at the expense of someone else. Usually non-whites and women. This book review has barely hinted upon the actual arguments  (which is good, and really you should read it) but this is kind of what got me thinking and spun me into a sea of anxious bullshit. Riot Grrrl wasn’t perfect by any means and Marcus does a really great job of talking about the pros and cons of Riot Grrrl and she does it with a good deal of objectivity. It does seem now, in hind sight, a group of white women trying to take space without realizing what privileged they  did have, often at the expense of non-white women. By no means do I think the women involved in Riot Grrrl were oversimplifying matters or ignoring race and class. But when the violence is daily and real and profound against you just for your gender, just getting over the psychic death is a struggle. It’s hard to occupy every aspect of every person when self-preservation is key to survival.

The Riot Grrrl movement taught me a lot as a young man growing up. I still have a lot to work on. I attempt to be cognizant when I fuck up and behave poorly. Sometimes people are cool enough to point it out, sometimes very harshly and without forgiveness. I have learned to accept that because often we think it is a woman’s role to point out to shit head men when they are being assholes. But it’s clearly not. I still very much love and believe in punk rock. It’s imperfections far outweighs it’s glory, even after 33 years (yes I believe I was born in the same year as punk, eat shit) there is still a lot of learning and changing to do. I will never stop believing in punk rock or everything I have learned. But tonight, I just can’t be that adult, white male in a community where I am a stranger. I can’t occupy physical space when I do not have anything invested in its actual growth. I can’t occupy that physical space when there are kids that live in that neighborhood who need that space to exist in and to express themselves. The suburbs make me crazy and are choking my soul as I sit here. But tonight, this is where I need to be.

KYS Presents Episode Ten – The “FUCK” Episode

Brought to you by the Korrupt Yr Self Church to the One Holy Scripture, One Word Long: Fuck. All Praise the Beautiful Word! Find it here.

A Fucking Intro
I Like Fucking – Bikini Kill
Welcome to another fucking episode of the Korrupt Yr Self Fucking Pod Cast You Sloppy Fuck
I Think We Should Fuck – Dead Teenagers
Hard Fucking – Tenacious D
Bravo, Another Beautiful “Fuck You” Song – Paint It Black
Mope Is A Fucking Piece of Shit – The Most Secret Method
Fuck on Off – Getaway Car
Where’s the Fucking Lyric Sheet – Guyana Punch Line
Home Fucking is Killing Prostitution – Guyanna Punch Line
Fuck This and Fuck That and Fuck That Dude With a Fucking French Hat
Thunderstorms Still Make Me Want to Fuck – A New Spelling of My Name
Fuck The Kids – NOFX
Fuck the Kids II – NOFX
Fuck the Kids (Revisited) – NOFX
Fuckuturn – Kid Dynamite
Fuck This, I’m Out – Off W/Their Heads
Go Fuck Your Self – Hammell on Trial
Who the Fuck – Now Sleepyhead
Fuck, is that stupid fuck still fucking talking? Fuck Me.
Don’t Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker – Turbonegro
Slack Motherfucker – Superchunk
Fuck the Border – Propaghandi
Bottom Line: Fuck You – Ruiner
Well, I’m sorry to say, but this is the end of the show, and I’ve never been more sad to say good bye. I really and truly want to cry because I enjoyed my self so much with this episode.
Fuck this Shit – Belle and Sebastian
(48:45)