Mike Conley, former vocalist of Orange County punk band MIA was found dead yesterday in Chicago. According to the news report, Mike was found unresponsive at 5:40 a.m. by a person staying in the hotel in the 2300 block of North Mannheim Road, sheriff’s police spokeswoman Penny Mateck said. He appeared to have suffered head injuries.
Check it out here.
I don’t often miss California or Berkeley, but last week saw a very special event that I wish I’d been there for. Pinhead Gunpowder, the long-lived but very occasional band featuring peripatetic wordsmith Aaron Cometbus and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong played a series of secret and not-so-secret shows capped off by a triumphant return to their spiritual home at Gilman Street.
Check it out here.
WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Tony Rettman on Detroit Hardcore: “And, after educating yourself on the impressive history of Touch and Go Magazine, the Necros and Negative Approach, be sure to peep Elisa’s list for yourself. Not only does the Magik Markers guitarist-vocalist give mention to one of my favorite novels (the gleaming tale of suburban disquiet, Revolutionary Road), she rustles up a fine collection of personal and cultural touchstones for your mind before you peace-out ‘07 for good.”
larrylivermore.com: At Gilman Street: “The MTX song pokes gentle fun at the Gilman purists, of whom I was undeniably one. ‘And if you’ve got nothing better to do, there’s a meeting every Sunday afternoon, you can talk about skinheads at the show, you can vote on whether you’re gonna vote, and you can make a speech, you can rant, you can rave, you can preach…’ Anyone who ever sat through one of those seemingly interminable meetings – sometimes they’d have to postpone the show for an hour because we were still voting on whether we were gonna vote’ – will recognize that picture.
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Punknews.org | H2O signs to Bridge 9: I always have to link to posts about the hardcore band H2O, because the reader comments under the article are always so vicious.
dead time pacifies:
I went to Burnt Ramen in Richmond. Burnt Ramen reminds me a lot of 924 Gilman circa 1991. I am not a big fan of that place.
It is in a poor neighborhood which serves to keep away the more normal weekender kids that all go to Gilman these days, but it is also packed full of wasted teenagers smoking cigarettes that incidentally are all probably banned from Gilman.
I went to see Bad Reaction and Broken Needle. Both great bands full of great dudes. However, the bands are pretty much secondary to this “review.” Just as the bands are most likely secondary to getting drunk for the Burnt Ramen crowd.
Here.
From Simon Garfield’s piece, “Getting Under Their Skins,” on UK skinheads, in the Observer:
‘I was so intense about being a skinhead, to me it was final,’ says Gavin Watson, a former skinhead from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. ‘Anybody who grew their hair for work or their girlfriend was severely mentally impaired. I would be downtown and see an older skin growing his hair for some reason or another, I would feel very disappointed. I could not understand how one could ever not be a skinhead once the step had been taken.’
Watson, who is 41, is a more reliable witness than most. On the floor of his Brighton flat is a large black case containing a few hundred photographs. ‘There are many, many more,’ he says. ‘I’ve got 5,000 printed and 10,000 in all.’ The living room windows are open with a view of the sea, and Watson is wearing an Adidas woollen cap and loose-fitting black work-out clothes. He is muscular, tattooed, and illustrates his speech with such animated, large hands that you think he may be wrestling an invisible animal. He calls his black case The Box of Death, and he goes through his photos with a mixture of delight and dread. ‘That’s John… that’s Lee… he went mad… he went off the rails on heroin. That’s Duncan. He died when a PA [an amplifier] fell on him.’
The story is Here. And more importantly, the photos are Here.
Wooster Collective:
Dan Witz has been working on a new series of figurative paintings for two upcoming shows in Europe; one in London at the Stolenspace, and the second in Paris at Addict Galerie.
If you check out Dan’s website, you’ll notice that he’s quietly previewing a few of the pieces.
Here.
PunkNews:
The Asbury Park Press has released an article speculating on the possible involvement of the “crew” FSU, or “Friends Stand United”, in the recent death of a James Morrison at a scheduled Ramallah show in Asbury Park, NJ.
According to numerous letters, emails and phone calls to both Morrison’s mother and the Asbury Park Press, Morrison and a few friends were allegedly attacked at the concert venue by FSU members because of one of Morrison’s friend’s shirt, which was southern rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd and featured a Confederate flag. According to the accounts, members of FSU immediately approched Morrison and friends, demanding the shirt be removed. When they refused, a brawl insued which lead to Morrison and two friends being pushed out the door by security, supposedly after a severe beating which may have included Morrison being struck with a bar stool.
Here.
Dead Time Pacifies:
I was introduced to Casey maybe 10 years ago and he has been a mainstay in our punk/hardcore scene long before that. He has been in more bands than anyone else I know of. Casey has been known for his bands and his brawls. In recent times, with the advent of ‘his’ crew, The Viking Skins, some amount of controversy has surrounded this man who seems to cast a long scary shadow. I think a lot of people are too scared to ask him questions. I knew he was an interesting dude, so I asked the questions.
Here.
Thrasher:
To commemorate our 25th Anniversary we are going to post a new mag from 1981 each month.
Here.
PunkNews:
Friday 29 $7
Gilman’s 20Th Anniversary Weekend
Doors at 6Pm
Born/Dead
This Is My Fist
Drain the Sky
the Jocks
Baby Jail
Thee Double D’s
Lil’ Runt
Hey Girl
Saturday 30 $8-$10
Gilman’s 20Th Anniversary Weekend
Doors at 6Pm
Social Unrest
El Dopa
Black Fork
Schlong
the United Intrepid Forces
Look Back and Laugh
a.D.T.
Sunday 31
Gilman’s 20Th Anniversary Weekend
Record Swap 10Am-2Pm
Basketball
Chess
Here.
LA Weekly:
At some point, I noticed a row of photo albums haphazardly stacked against the wall, and I began to look through them. What I found were thousands of images composing a visual history of West Coast punk culture, starting with Jennifer Finch’s teenage Hollywood years and proceeding through her time in Seattle for the birth of grunge, and then on tour with L7 for Lollapalooza and later on several Warped Tours with both L7 and the Shocker.
But what captured my attention beyond all the history and rock stars were her earlier pictures, from our teen years in the Los Angeles punk scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s. There was admittedly a wave of bittersweet nostalgia, seeing so many old friends looking young and unscathed, if not particularly innocent. But when I managed to step back, what resonated far more was the undeniably troubled quality of the subjects in her images. I had seen the energy and defiance captured by other photographers, but while many have been able to render the rebelliousness, none seemed to grasp the underlying discontent like Finch. And the truth is, as provocative and exciting as those years were, what attracted such a disparate cross section of kids to both the music and one another was that, more than anything, the scene gave purpose to the pain. Perhaps because Finch was a part of it, one of us, it’s there on display in her photos — the uncertainty, deep friendships, youthful sexuality and eyes-closed comfort of the heroin that would eventually destroy the scene and so many of us.
Here.
NYT:
On a recent sunny afternoon, the ramp’s owner, Bob Burnquist, a renowned 30-year-old professional skateboarder from Brazil, peered over the side to treetops below and said: “I’m not afraid of falling. I’m afraid I might jump.”
That mind-set helps on the Mega Ramp, where skaters reach speeds of up to 55 miles an hour and soar like stuntmen.
Approximately 360 feet long, the ramp is 75 feet high at its apex. That is where riders begin their run, speeding down a 180-foot-long roll-in to a ramp that launches them across a 70-foot gap with trapeze netting below. Landing on a 27-foot sloped section, they then boost up to 50 feet above the ground from a 30-foot quarterpipe. A shorter route begins with a 55-foot-tall platform leading to a 50-foot gap, and the 30-foot quarterpipe.
Here.
NYT:
After a protracted real estate battle with its landlord, a nonprofit organization that aids the homeless, CBGB agreed late last year to leave its home at 313 and 315 Bowery at the end of this month. And Ms. Smith’s words outside the club, where her group was playing, encapsulated the feelings shared by fans around the city and around the world: CBGB is both the scrappy symbol of rock’s promise and a temple that no one wanted to see go.
“CBGB is a state of mind,” she said from the stage in a short preshow set for the news media whose highlight was a medley of Ramones songs.
“There’s new kids with new ideas all over the world,” she added. “They’ll make their own places — it doesn’t matter whether it’s here or wherever it is.”
Here.
NYT reviews American Hardcore. My review from a January showing at Sundance is Here.
NYT:
Musically hardcore was a repudiation of almost everything, from disco to the dilution of first-generation punk labeled new wave to, of course, the same high-flying and deeply loathed bands, like the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Journey, that the original punks also despised. Hardcore was more than noncommercial; it was anticommercial. No one in the movement made more than spare change, and many lived hand to mouth. Poverty was synonymous with purism.
Directed by Paul Rachman, from a screenplay by Steven Blush based on his book “American Hardcore: A Tribal History,” the film, which is filled with grainy archival clips of hardcore performances, is a toned-down cinematic equivalent of the music: fast and loud, but not too loud. The movie scrambles to cover so much territory that there is room only for musical shards and slivers; few complete songs are heard, and no signature anthems stand out. These excerpts are spliced with pungent bits and pieces from dozens of interviews, the whole crisply edited into a rapid-fire history. If 9 out of 10 bands are groups almost no one ever heard of, the movie’s encyclopedic concept is touchingly thorough.
Here.
From Thrasher:
Danny Way is in Las Vegas where he is going to attempt to smash the Bomb Drop world record by jumping from the giant neon-covered guitar atop the Hard Rock Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.
Here.
From Punknews.org:
As far as a new record, the band had this to say: “the new record is coming along great! All we need to finish it is …songs. As soon as we write some, we are SO going to record that bad boy!”
The band is also working on a new project called Yo Gabba Gabba which is aimed at pre-schoolers. They will be writing music, acting and directing the show.
Here.
