Monday, May 12, 2014
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Some Stories about Jimmy Gestapo
I'll tell you an interesting story. I don't know how I feel about it. So I'm standing in front of CB's with the guitar player from this punk band I was playing in at the time, Skin Candy. Was I playing there that day with Killing Time? Killing Time and Skin Candy were around at the same time. I was playing in both bands. We ended up recording albums in the same month. So, I'm standing there talking to Dave - Dave Grillo. [I gotta send him a friend request. I found him on Facebook. You know what's weird? I think I found his Facebook page on Thanksgiving but I didn't send him a friend request then because I thought it would be weird. Why am I searching for Dave Grillo on Thanksgiving? Don't I have better things to do? Don't I have a family to be with?] Ok, so we're standing there and this broken bottle flies in-between our faces. Like, say we're sitting like this and: whoooo. And then I'm thinking about it, I'm like: well, usually bottles fly through the air intact until they hit something then they break. But this guy got thrown out of CB's and he took a beer bottle and he smashed it on his own head. So, the bottom of the bottle - cause he grabbed a long neck and BAM on his own head - and the bottom of the bottle flew in-between Dave and I. So, we look over at this dude and this dude's pissed because he got kicked out of CB's and so...the white power kids from Pennsylvania, they were tolerated at New York shows if they kept their mouths shut and didn't do any of their business. They couldn't openly fly their regalia or anything in New York. That was not tolerated. And probably people wouldn't mess with them at shows as long as they didn't pipe up. You know, because New York was always very racially diverse and was completely intolerant of racism or anything like that. So this guy starts, maybe using the N-word or something? He was saying some racially offensive stuff which puts you in a little bit of a weird position because we're this scene that's supposed to be not judging other people. We're about freedom and doing what you want. But then, at the same time this guy's saying some racially offensive stuff. So do we support his freedom of speech? Or do we reject his racism? So Chaka steps up - Chaka who was in Burn and then Orange 9mm. I think he came from D.C. I remember when he first started hanging out. He's a good guy. I like Chaka. So Chaka steps up and starts brawling with this dude. Now, the dude was like, pretty damn muscular, and Chaka was just a regular stature guy. So Chaka starts losing. No one's gonna really let that happen. So a bunch of people jump in and just start beating this dude. I remember, even Jimmy Gestapo from Murphy's Law had a broken foot or a broken leg at the time, he had a cast, and he was walking with a cane. Jimmy Gestapo ran across the street to beat the shit out of this guy with his cane. So an ambulance came and took the guy away and the story always goes: "dude, I heard he died." Everybody always dies and the end. I'm like, nah, I don't think so. There's so many stories like that where the dude dies. He probably didn't. Maybe sometimes. But I think most of the time that's not what happens.
Oh! I'll tell you another one that I only got confirmation on just a few years ago. Not that long ago. So I was over at a show at CB's or maybe The Pyramid or something and my friend Sammy Crestbow says: I was just over at Tompkins Square and I seen Jimmy Gestapo from Murphy's Law sneak up behind a dude and hit him in the back of the head with a brick! And you don't know whether to believe that or not. That sounds like a pretty outlandish tale. So, I just kept that one. So then years later, like 20 years later…and I'm friends with Jimmy Gestapo now…I say: Hey Jimmy. I heard this story maybe '86/'87 that you snuck up behind a guy in Tompkins Square Park and hit him in the back of the head with a brick. Did you do that shit? And he said: Hells yeah I did that shit! Him and another guy named Blue Eyes caught me one night and they beat the crap out of me, the two of them. So I seen him in the park one time and I go around in the bushes and I find a brick and I go up behind him and just POW, right in the head. And he goes: I found Blue Eyes too. I saw him sitting on the wall one time and I came up to him and I said "Hey! Do you remember me?'' And he didn't and he [Jimmy] said So I just started kicking the shit out of him on the ground. So that's weird, because I don't really support violence. But I don't know. These two guys jumped him. He got them both back. I don't know what I think of all that.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Monday, May 5, 2014
What Hardcore's All About
Here's a little segment from my interview with Rich McLaughlin of Breakdown and Killing Time in which he explains to me how hardcore punk works musically and thematically. And, below is a video of Crazy Spirit [I brought in a few of their records last week] playing a show at -- the now defunct -- 285 Kent last year, just to give y'all an idea of what shows are like.
"Of course, in hardcore you can't let any part go for very long. You have to constantly be changing the parts. You know, if anything drags on like sixteen times…it's not…like eights and fours, and if you want to get crazy you can do threes and sixes. So we would sometimes do threes. Like, this part's only gonna go three times. People want it to go four or two. It's not! It's going three! Or, it's gonna go two and a half. Or it's gonna go five and there's gonna be a little thing on the end before it goes to another part, so it jars you. It's gotta keep some jarring aspect. I mean, some of that is the tension of rhythms that push and pull in between the two so that the thing is never settled. Because one of the things you don't have with hardcore is you don't have dynamics. That's one of the things that's mostly off the table. You always play at full volume. So your pallet is: double time/half time and opposing rhythms. So you gotta work out all your songs out of those things and you could also have guys playing at different times against each other. Like, two guys are playing half time and two guys are playing full time -- or whatever you want to consider it, double time. And you could also have that move. You could have three guys playing and the the drummer drops down to half and then people follow him into half or…you know, all kinds of stuff.
This is also something I bet you all bands like that do, but I named it. It's called "personal hardcore." So, sometimes you mash the parts together…the next [part] jumps onto the one before it and cuts off a little piece. But sometimes you can't exactly explain how that happens. Like, the last repetition of a part you have to rush or your not going to make it to the next part. So you gotta figure out your own way -- that's not really musical -- there's no real musical explanation that I know of, of how come the next part's gonna come a little bit too soon, before you're ready for it. That's personal hardcore.
We also have a song called 'Personal Hardcore' about friends stabbing friends in the back. You know, every hardcore song is basically about getting stabbed in the back. Don't you think so? I thought you were my friend! Then you stabbed me in the back! If you had to distill down "what is a hardcore song?" it would be I thought you were my friend, then you stabbed me in the back. I trusted you. Nine million hardcore songs are written from that basic idea. And I guess that's a thing at the point where most people are at in their lives then. It's like, leaving your family and trying to make some kind of support group of friends which, you know...I almost don't even want to say this. Young people often need something out of their friendships that just doesn't exist. If they're lucky, maybe that stuff will exist in some degree. People say: my friends are my family. I can trust them through anything. That's why we end up with so many songs: I trusted you, you stabbed me in the back. Kids do that. ' I don't know, that was not particularly important to me. But for a lot of people it was. It probably was more when I was younger. I just already knew, most people you can't depend on. Or you can depend on them in varying degrees. Like, who can you call in the middle of the night to come pick you up? That's some real shit there."
Saturday, May 3, 2014
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