Bad Books Are Bad, and Bad Food Is Bad. But Bad Movies Are Not Always Bad

What’s missing from the title? Music. Specifically bad music.

Perhaps Stephenson left bad music out of the conversation for a reason. Because there’s something intrinsically attractive about bad music that, like bad films, is certainly interesting.

Take brokeNCYDE, a crunkcore/scrunk group that’s almost critically reviled and became the butt-end of an Internet joke when their video for “Freaxxx” hit the web in late ’08. Yet, they have loads of fans, which no doubt fueled a lot of the angry words hurled at the band.

When so many individuals are bent on calling brokeNCYDE purveyors of “bad music,” I’ve got to wonder if anyone enjoys them simply because of their perceived negative qualities. Does the amalgamation of screamo, crunk beats and autotune sound so terrible it becomes kind of enjoyable? Or is there just something intrinsically peculiar about a band that goes to the extreme when trying to find a new voice, no matter how bad it sounds.

I was fascinated with brokeNCYDE the minute I discovered them. Apparently, so was Damian Abraham, frontman for a critically-beloved Canadian hardcore act known as Fucked Up. Exclaim! TV featured an interview Abraham conducted with brokeNCYDE, and though the folks at Exclaim! seem happy to wallow in the irony of these two disparate musical worlds colliding, I’ve got to give Abraham credit for discussing brokeNCYDE in terms most music outlets would never dare to think about. DIY and brokeNCYDE? Perish the thought!

Well, Abraham hardly let the thought go to waste with his intro to the interview, but the actual interview is a bit, well, light. The guys in brokeNCYDE seem so stuck on the same subjects (ie, we just want to create something new, haters hate, etc.), they don’t really get away from the same ole’ same ole’. Though the band members casually complain about being lumped into categories, there’s not much they do to take the conversation about their group in a new direction.

It’s something I encountered when I did a piece for the Boston Phoenix about brokeNCYDE and the whole scrunk scene that took over last year’s Warped Tour. I spent the days leading up to my interview with brokeNCYDE’s Mikl thinking and re-thinking of questions to ask the singer/rapper, but the answers I got were run-of-the-mill. I wasn’t expecting bombshells, but I was hoping for an ounce of difference, a little bit of perspective from these kids that people apparently don’t understand. All I heard on my end of the phone was much of the same, “we don’t care about haters” discussion.

Still, I got some quotes for the article, quotes I hoped would shine some new light on a story I felt wasn’t getting the proper coverage a musical “phenomenon” usually receives in the press. I thought I got it down to the button, and I still do feel like my piece covered the attitudes being brought to that scene within the Warped Tour universe.

But, I was struck again by brokeNCYDE yet again today. Abraham’s interview made me revisit the sound everyone was so hot to dismiss, and, even with its insanely bad qualities, there is still something irresistible to it all. And, to me, it has a lot of the enjoyable qualities of a bad film. There’s just something so appealing about a bunch of kids who want to try something absurd, and give it their all. Christopher Weingarten put it best in an interview with Eye Weekly last year:

What the worst records you’ve had to endure?
Well, obviously the Brokencyde record… I hate to dog on those guys because it’s kind of an internet meme to make fun of Brokencyde. And if someone pitched the idea of southern bounce beats plus screamo, I would totally say that sounds like a great idea.

The idea is great, and even in their “failure” of execution, I can hear some ghost of botched genius hanging out in the background. Despite the horrid sounds, it’s certainly different. And the sincerity, much like the sincerity of the directors of good-bad movies like Troll 2 or The Room, is all there, loud and clear. It’s hard to hear through the obnoxious screaming and insipid lyrics, but the guys in brokeNCYDE really believe what they are saying. I certainly find a line like “Get crunk, get crazy/All fucked up/Make me wanna punch babies” poorly perceived at best, but I really believe that, for the members of brokeNCYDE, there’s something fantastic about getting drunk to the point of wanting to harm an infant.

It’s not a sentiment, or sound, I could ever agree with, but I may finally give brokeNCYDE props for really giving it their all.

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Though Nelson has typically listed his items at relatively affordable prices, it has been something of a gold-mine. In December, Nelson sold a test pressing of Minor Threat’s Out of Step EP for $5,899.99 after putting it on eBay for a modest price of $50. (For the curious folks, the winning bidder paid nearly 118 times the original asking price.)

Some may consider that an infraction of DIY punk rules, but really, it’s the fans who were willing to pay extravagant amounts of money that made the price, well, just that extravagant. Nostalgia seems to be taking hardcore punk fans by force, and Nelson just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Now, Nelson’s not the only musician from hardcore punk’s original class on eBay. Black Flag’s original bass player Chuck Dukowski jumped onto eBay in January, and has begun to unload some of his personal collection online.

Dukowski has a pretty solid collection on eBay. Of course, a lot of it will really appeal to the rabid SST Records fan. Still, there’s an unopened copy of Negativland’s recalled U2 album, and test pressings of BLAST, fIREHOSE and Black Flag albums. While the test pressing of Black Flag’s Wasted Again is currently going for almost twice the original price of what Nelson asked for when he put Out of Step on eBay (that’s $99 to $50), it’s still considerably cheaper than what some fans would be willing to spend on such an album. Especially with Dukowski’s description of the item:

This is an ultra rare “Test Pressing” of BLACK FLAG’s “WASTED AGAIN” compilation.

Not to many of these out there. Definitely under 100 probably in the 20-30 range.

You can berate Dukowski all you want for the pricing if that’s how you choose to spend your time. I, however, would rather compare and rate Dukowski’s item descriptions against that of Nelson’s. And Nelson wins by far. Whereas Dukowski gives short, informative descriptions, Nelson weaves entertaining yarns. Check out Nelson’s description of a Minor Threat/Meatmen/Negative Approach flyer (current asking price: $1.26):

RARE, mint-condition black & white xeroxed flyer (8 1/2″ x 11″ [216mm x 280mm]), for crazy show at The Freezer in Detroit, Michigan on June 18th, 1982. While The Meatmen are listed on the flyer as playing, my notes do not list them as having played. Instead, lineup for that night was Minor Threat, Negative Approach, Whipping Boy, and The Allied. Fighting outside show, cops swarmed the place, and our singer Ian had to chase the concert promoter several blocks to his apartment to get paid.  Flyer features life-affirming Pushead illustration, of a punk with good bone structure but bad teeth doing party tricks with a guillotine to impress his girlfriend.

As the flyer information shows, eBay item description writing is an art form that few understand quite like Nelson.

You can check out Jeff Nelson (hommedegomme) and Chuck Dukowski’s (rarepunksst) hardcore memorabilia at eBay.

Black Flag (sans Dukowski):

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Minor Threat:

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Normally, I’m not one for self-promoting on my blog here, but I can’t help but get this story out there. As a friend who organizes DIY shows in Boston posted on my Facebook wall said: “This community has gone horribly under-appreciated for many years.” And that can be said for the DIY and all-ages community country-wide, not just in Chicago.

Growing up in the DC Metro area spoiled me. The very moment I wanted to see a concert by a band I loved, I was able to go. For the most part, I never had to worry about age restrictions holding me back from seeing a musician or act. It wasn’t until I moved to the Boston area that I understood how lucky I was being able to see bands I enjoyed as a teen, and how thoroughly odd it is that there are roadblocks for kids who want to see music in so many cities across the country.

I’ve got to say thanks to everyone I interviewed for this piece. Without them, I couldn’t have put together the article. So, thank you Kevin from the All-ages Movement Project, Todd P., Matt from Schubas, Jim Grimes, Efrat from Chicago’s Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Department and Ian MacKaye.

Most of all, I’d like to thank the people who opened their basements and living rooms to me (and countless strangers) and allowed me to document what happened there. So, to Jason at Enemy, Christine at Ottoman Empire and, most of all, Matt (and co.) at Strangelight, thank you.

Here’s a little clip of a performance by Algernon Cadwallader at Strangelight before I began to work on this piece. Enjoy:

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Some Kind of Merchandiser from Leor Galil on Vimeo.

“Merchandise, it keeps us alive,” Fugazi proclaimed on their song “Merchandise.” Though the D.C. punk act saw merch as a distraction, many Do It Yourself punk acts use money from selling records and clothing to survive as a band.

When Philadelphia’s Algernon Cadwallader played Strangelight – a new Chicago DIY venue – on Friday, Feb. 5, singer/bassist Peter Helmis took some time to discuss the process of creating and selling merchandise. Peter highlighted an important attribute of creating one’s own records and merchandise that many artists are beginning to take advantage of in the digital era:

It’s really helpful, if you’re a band that’s playing lots of shows, to have a bunch of your records. If someone else puts it out, they’ll give you a bunch of free ones to start out with, then you have to buy them from the label whenever you need them. If you put it out yourself, it’s more money up front, but you have like 1,000 records at your disposal whenever you want. You don’t have to buy them again, you just sell them, have them whenever you go out.

As the band saves money by putting out its own records (Algernon’s DIY label is called Be Happy Records) and bringing their merch on tour, fans have the chance of saving money as well. Buying a record at a concert is usually cheaper than ordering it online or through a mail order, and often some of the merchandise isn’t available online. Three items onsale at the concert – the 75:24 tape, the Fun 7″ record and the tour T-shirt – are either sold out online or not available elsewhere. The group’s CD – Some Kind of Cadwallader – cost $6 at the concert and costs upwards of $8 online (plus shipping and handling).

Like a lot of DIY punk bands, Algernon Cadwallader isn’t getting rich and famous from its merchandise or playing concerts. As Peter said:

It’s anything but full-time, but it’s definitely a full-time hobby. It’s our passion.

To get a glimpse of Algernon Cadwallader’s Friday night performance, take a look at the video below:

Algernon Cadwallader – “Some Kind of Cadwallader” from Leor Galil on Vimeo.

Dischord in the Aughts was something many of the label’s ardent fans never saw coming. The beloved DIY label seemed to be going through changes no one was quite prepared to handle. Fugazi, an act who’s importance in punk and independent rock cannot be boiled down into a mere sentence, bid farewell a year after the release of the excellent 2001 album The Argument. The label’s second-longest running band, Lungfish, began to slow to a hiatus halfway through the decade after 2005′s Feral Hymns. Most of the big name acts that called the label home had either broken up (Nation of Ulysses, The Make Up) or left Dischord for major label disappointment (Shudder to Think, Jawbox). The Aughts appeared to be something of a mystery for the storied label.

There’s a message in this history somewhere. For folks who stopped following the label’s releases beyond Y2K because of the lack of any familiar bands, Rachel Burke sung it best on Beauty Pill’s “The Mule On The Plane”:

“Look beyond the things you know.”

Simply put, Dischord in the Aughts provides a fascinating example of a community-bred and-inspired label undergoing unforseen change. It’s not the first time Dischord went through some heady change: the transition from its hardcore heavy catalogue to a range of post-hardcore acts in the mid-’80s is well documented in books like Dance of Days and Our Band Could Be Your Life. Yet, whereas the change at Dischord in the ’80s reflected a post-adolescent maturation beyond the schema of hardcore, the label’s evolution in the Aughts has been something of a family tree. Dischord was no longer an insular friend group of youngsters. It became a group adults with children and more responsibilities than most touring acts endure; it became an extended family tree consisting of newly-minted adults inspired by the previous decades’ Dischord artists; it became a rambunctious, eclectic collective that included dozens of little voices.

One of the more intriguing acts to come out of Dischord the past decade is easily Beauty Pill. Though Q And Not U became the franchise band once Fugazi bowed out, Beauty Pill has a certain ambiguous relationship with punk that’s nearly unrivaled in the Dischord catalogue and downright negligible to overlook. Today, you’d toss Beauty Pill’s sound into the ever-confusing “indie” label without second thought, but a record like The Unsustainable Lifestyle is more aurally dexterous than some commercialized genre term could ever provide.

Image via Wikipedia

Released in 2004, The Unsustainable Lifestyle continues to sound like a revelation today. It might not bring about world peace anytime soon, but the kind of musical montage the group created still seems novel today. There are the usual elements of storied-DC post-hardcore guitar work mixed in with some pop-friendly piano arrangements, hip-hop break beats, studio dub experimentation, twee sentimentality and lyrics that span the depths of societal critique, pop music polemics and simply inventive storytelling.

Musically, Beauty Pill are one of the most adept bands to release an album on Dischord. It’s quite hard to find a song as achingly simple and heart-wrenching as “Prison Song (A Love Song Called Will You Come Visit Me In Prison),” where Burke’s multi-tracked vocals are drapped over an acoustic guitar and the spare wurlitzer. And yet, one of the most striking aspects of the song isn’t merely its simplicity, but its lyrics and executed performance: the juxtaposition of a comforting female voice atop the narrative of a lovelorn inmate makes the track that much more memorable.

The ingenious use of lyrical and musical dynamics are, quite unfortunately, something that many bands just don’t quite seem to understand or test out. And Beauty Pill just got it right with The Unsustainable Lifestyle. Be it the cinematic music providing cover for Chad Clark’s homespun story of cool-chasing bands and fans on the opening tune “Goodnight for Real,” or Burke’s sweet vocals serenading an instrumental straight out of mid-’90s emo territory providing the “other side” of a relationship (in all its definitions) on “I’m Just Gonna Close My Eyes For A Second,” every song holds it own in impressive ways.

And yet, despite all of its fantastic qualities, The Unsustainable Lifestyle and Beauty Pull are practically unheard of outside certain circles. Which is a downright shame. For if every music fan who loves Fugazi were to give a song like “Won’t You Be Mine” a spin and hear Clark’s intelligent, insightful and catchy indictment of gangsta rappers, The Unsustainable Lifestyle could have been an early success in the eventual rise of “indie” culture rather than an unheard-of gem.

Beauty Pill – “Terrible Things”:

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We’re proud to announce that PARTS & LABOR will be releasing their new album, “Receivers,” on 10/21/08 here in the US and 11/03/08 in the UK.

Brooklyn’s Parts & Labor has become one of my favorite bands in recent years, and it’s been simply wonderful to see them grow as an artistic entity and in the eyes of the music community. In a handful of years and successive releases, they’ve turned from an anthemic noise act of uncompromising creativity into the center of a vibrant underground music scene in Brooklyn. With the release of Receivers in October, there is no doubt they’ll continue on their trajectory of making outstanding music. From the sound of it, they’ve already managed to do that. Pitchfork released the track titled “Nowheres Nigh” today, and chances are, P&L aren’t far off from joining a number of their critically-acclaimed contemporaries. The song is pure pop, but still contains those elements that make Parts & Labor such an anomaly; the clashing sounds of electronic blips float with ease atop shoegaze waves of fuzz, while Joe Wong maniacally bashes away on the drum-kit in the background and BJ Warshaw exemplifies the poppiest vocal work to rival any previous track the band has made. It’s a change-up for the band, but it keeps to their mantra of pushing their own creative notions.

old Parts & Labor live pic

I’ve been lucky enough to see Parts & Labor grow in time with a bit of my own maturation. While interning at Rock Sound magazine in London, I introduced the folks at the magazine to Parts & Labor after throwing their then-upcoming release (Mapmaker) onto the stereo. The staff instantly fell in love with the band as I won a little cred in their books; pretty soon I was interviewing Dan Friel for an “Exposure” piece on the band, no doubt bringing them into the homes of many new UK fans. A year later I had the pleasure of putting on a show with the band at Brandeis University; I was involved in putting on a lot of great shows in Chums coffeehouse (the venue of choice at Brandeis), but the Parts & Labor show was one of my favorites. A month ago I treked down to Brooklyn for the After The Jump Fest, where Dan pointed out what acts to check out, which included a set by newly-acquired P&L guitarist Sarah Lipstate’s solo project, Noveller.

I’m more than happy to say that I will also be a part of the next Parts & Labor album. While they worked away on Receivers, Parts & Labor asked fans to send in audio samples, leaving four questions as guides. I sent in a little something, and although I have no idea how they used it, the band has decided to use every single submitted audio sample for their record. Now if that’s not the sign of an inclusive, open community I don’t know what is. Of course, those ideas go hand in hand with Parts & Labor; besides the musical influence of punk’s past, the ideological influence of the DIY, hardcore and post-hardcore greats that filled the 80s is especially strong in how the band runs everything. And community, as strong as it is within the lineage of emo (and I shall write no more on emo and community for this post), is an especially strong aspect of Parts & Labor’s existence and coexistence. Friel and Warshaw even went as far as to create their own record label – Cardboard records – in order to release material from bands that they felt a strong ideological, musical, and personal connection to. Just as, say, Dischord (ok, I lied a little bit about two sentences ago) became an epicenter for a small, DC punk community, Cardboard has become a connection for like-minded musicians across the country. Just pick up Love and Circuits, a double album compiling all the bands that Parts & Labor has shared a communal bond with, and you’ll hear a fraction of the bands involved in the American art-punk/noise/whatever you want to call it community. Just as a record label, a venue, or a town can become centers of musical and cultural scenes, in their own way Parts & Labor – as a band and an idea – have also become something of a meeting point for a community.

The Cardboard Family

Parts & Labor will be performing at Siren Music Festival this Saturday and Whartscape this Sunday. Make it to the shows if you can.

Parts & Labor – Nowheres Nigh

Parts & Labor – The Gold We’re Digging (video):

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No, it wasn’t Rall’s commentary on Obama that was striking (although that is a particularly interesting comment on Obama’s policy, though I often feel that Rall reads in between the lines a bit too much… but that’s part of the humor of absurdity). It was Rall’s quick side-swipe at emo. For someone who combs through detail after detail in the search of the elusive truth in modern politics, the fact that he managed to quickly label emo as crap with his humorous jab is a bit frightening.

Now, I may have gotten ahead of myself or gotten off to a bad start. So, let me rewind here and explain:

This blog isn’t meant to be a place of bitter complaints and sideswipes. I can easily see the humor in Rall’s use of emo as an aural weapon for torture (in fact, I myself have done the same thing in the past, equating jam-based act OAR with musical punishment). I’m not getting needlessly upset by Rall’s quick side-comment; this is simply a starting place for my general frustration with our society’s close-mindedness as seen through the microcosmic scope of emo.

So, rather than complain and or try in vain attempts to change certain individuals’ perspectives on emo, I shall write my thoughts and concepts on the culture in this blog for anyone who is open-minded enough to see it. Of all the pop phenomenons to dominate the American mainstream and be a face of our country’s cultural output, emo has had a terrible rep. It’s been labeled a suicide-hungry cult. It’s apparently been the root cause of teenage violence and cultural friction in Mexico. It’s even been blamed for the death of a 13 year-old in the UK. And to think that a few years ago people thought of it as harmless love songs for punks.

If only things were so easy. To think, we could blame some cultural product for all of life’s problems. If that were the case, we wouldn’t really have to worry that much about anything. So, there are two options we as a society can take: start an anti-emo cult petition to fictitiously solve all our ails, or try and solve our problems not by blaming them on outside sources, but by making constructive attempts to work towards an actual solution.

Making an attempt to understand emo couldn’t hurt. In fact, solutions and emo should be thought of as being hand-in-hand. When the cultural movement and sound that was originally tagged as “emo,” short for “emotional hardcore,” arose, it was at the center of a community looking for self-improvement. Back in 1985, the DC punk scene was going through a Renaissance. After suffering the downfall of hardcore punk into violent, bigoted chaos, a handful of forward-thinking youngsters in the DC area decided to make a positive change. Centered around Dischord, the DIY record label home to DC’s most prominent hardcore acts, a burst of creativity surged through teens who had seen the best and worst of the underground hardcore movement. These individuals began to form bands that subverted the usual hardcore histrionics, taking the passion and power of hardcore and slowing it down, pumping it with a pop-friendly sense of musicality, and packing it with cunning lyrics imbued with ideas about change, maturity, community, self, and politics. And politics. They began to protest the Apartheid in South Africa and become more involved in the local DC community, with a particular bent towards helping the underprivileged communities of their fair city. And it was doomed to be called emo.

Since then, emo has spent two decades-plus in the American wilderness so to speak. For decades, emo thrived in the underground, changing and evolving with each community that was touched by it, until it’s come to the present state of popularity and misconception. But more on that later.

This blog will be more than a simple lesson in history. Some entries (in fact, most) will not even directly be associated with emo. To be truthful, most of what is commonly referred to as emo today simply doesn’t affect me in the way that the emo of previous years has. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, but alas, that is not the rule (and that may be one of the reasons why emo is generally thought of as terrible). But, whatever may crop up, I will inevitably find a way of connecting it with emo. Be it political debates, zombie movies, football, current subcultural movements, I will find a way of connecting it to emo… or at least try to. I’ll mostly touch upon the music that I find particularly appealing, and if it isn’t within the realm of emo, I’ll connect it to what I feel is one of the most important cultural forces in recent years.

Why is emo so important? It could be the fact that, unlike any other genre of pop music and its reflexive culture (with the exception of rock, which seems to include every form of pop), emo has covered the most rugged, twisted, and adventurous path. It could be the fact that it’s evolved in ways that mirror the various sub-genres of rock, yet it all seems to be contained within an odd three letter word. It could be the fact that, whatever the band from whatever year, nearly any fan of rock or pop could find an act that they could connect with. It could be the fact that with all its changes and intents, emo is one of the greatest reflections of our society. Or it could be the fact that emo simply is, and has been, an amorphous blob that’s been anything to anyone over decades of time.

This blog is called “Perfect Lines,” a title I cribbed from a song by 1990s emo wunder-band The Promise Ring. The Promise Ring is an act that I admire in particular for the cunning use of language that makes each song so vibrant. Singer Davey Von Bohlen’s words seem to bleed into each other, creating a sense of boundless ideas that make each listen a new experience. The lyrics are like little treasures that continue to give long after the gold has been found. Or just amazing puns that aren’t corny. I hope that my writings in this blog are similar to Von Bohlen’s capacity as a songwriter; the kind that always seem to have something new to say, where ideas are intertwined with a certain sense of ease. Simply put, I hope to write perfect lines.

The Promise Ring – \”Why Did Ever We Meet\”

(Sorry folks, it’s not “Perfect Lines,” but it is another great song by The Promise Ring off the same album – “Nothing Feels Good”)