God, so it’s mid-April already. When I decided to write this faux-column I had no idea it would be this hard to come up with a few pages once a month. I think I much prefer the “showing” of my show as opposed to the “telling” of writing. It is kind of the same difference between being an artist and a critic, but in this case, putting my show together is more like being a curator I guess. I think what I need to do from now on is focus less on trying to write a monthly essay and instead just string together random anecdotes and thoughts.
So to begin… I played an ECOLI song a month or so ago. I would like to go ahead and publicly retract that. They have an interview in the most recent MRR and they say ‘our ep has a KKK member raping a black woman on the cover, that’s what it is all about, the raping of other cultures, the ep is also all about the Turner Diaries, which we find disgusting and therefore thought it would be cool to do a release about, since everyone always does stuff about things that they like instead of what they hate’. I am paraphrasing here of course, but it is almost that stupid in real life.
I mean, seriously guys, this is just mouth breathing, drooling, mongoloid level idiocy. I realize not all punx are the brightest and the subcult does attract any number of dirtball degenerates, but come on. There is a history here and in the age of the internet it is pretty embarrassing to be so ignorant of it. It reminds me of a column Felix had about a year or so ago where he talked about the MODERN LOVERS and in the next issue some kid had written in asking where to get their records. All of us were stupid teenagers once with no concept of musical history, but unless that kid happened to be the only kid in America without access to the internet, he has no excuse. Christ, here is a hint, whenever you hear about something you don’t know about already, go and look it up and download it and then pretend you always knew about it like the rest of us. Have a little pride people! But I digress, back to ECOLI.
I personally don’t like shock art/punk, not because I am so hyper PC that it offends me, but because it is just so dumb. It is the artistic equivalent to what comedians call “dropping your pants”. Do you all know that expression? It means that if a routine is going badly, one way out of it is to get progressively dirtier because those kinds of jokes appeal to our baser instincts and will always get laughs from someone, which is such an inelegant solution.
Being offensive for the sake of being offensive is just boring. We have seen it all before, it just doesn’t have the same effect anymore. I remember 10 years or so ago I saw this band called the WOODSMAN MILITIA play. I walked in to a basement bar in the middle of them doing their best GG impersonation to a room full of bored skinheads. The skins were all huddled in the back of the room, not out of any fear of mic stands and broken bottles, but because the singer was all cut up and flinging his blood all around, and everyone, even a room full of skinheads, is afraid of AIDS.
The singer later walked around on South Street Philadelphia on a weekend night with his bleeding face and his WOODSMAN MILITIA jacket with the Confederate battle flag on the back, which I thought was a bit ballsier than playing the caged geek at the punk rock side show for 20 minutes. Later, I overheard him talking about his wife and kids and the new house he just bought, which just completely ruined it. At least GG was a bonafide degenerate.
So what is the point here? If you want to be shocking and offensive just be shocking and offensive and realize that many of us are then going to think you are a moron. Don’t try to rationalize your bullshit, and if you really are dumb enough to think that Canadian border police (and a large part of the punk public [see for example the WARKRIME mess]) aren’t going to realize that your 7” about the Turner Diaries with a KKK rape cover is tongue and cheek, just keep your fool mouth shut instead of opening it and removing all doubt.
This is kind of on par with warporn that is now the default cover art of any contemporary d-beat and crust band. Look victims of war atrocities! That would make such a killer album cover! And let everyone know we think war is bad! It’s all just so bloody stupid, especially when an insightful use of shock can be very effective. I always think about Lenny Bruce’s “nigger, kike, spic, mick” bit. He offended the hell out of the room initially, angered people and then made an extremely valuable point about the power of words. Which is maybe what they meant to do here, in a staggeringly incompetent manner? I doubt it though, since the new school of old school thrash hardcore just seem to wallow in their juvenilia, more interested in being anti-PC than with actually having anything to say. It’s such a bogus attempt to be edgy by using racist imagery, while excusing it by then saying “but we think racism is BAD”. Even if this is actually an especially misguided attempt to educate, it is it’s all so fucking pointless anyway. No one that could be affected will ever hear or see this.
I was thinking about arguing about how this better have a lyric sheet, because if it didn’t some wing-nut in some small town will pick this up and get turned on to the Turner Diaries and next thing you know we have another aspiring Aryan on our hands, but then I realized that no one will ever see this record. This shit is all pressed in batches of something like 300, sold through pre-order online mail-order distros or on tour and then ends up on eBay a few months later, with astronomical mark-ups marketed to the rich collector scum. People like me that just want to hear this shit just download it. Later when the band is deemed to be important (and this won’t happen with ECOLI, trust me) all the super rare ep’s are all comped on to one CD by one of the bigger indie labels. This has been going on for years, but it was really mastered by the band of choice for all the internet virgins out there, FUCKED UP.
Despite how much shark FUCKED UP has now jumped, they at least were/are smart enough to fuck with peoples preconceptions of what hardcore is, and their flirtation with fascist and racist imagery was at least intellectual and subtle, more in the realm of Anselm Kiefer than any shock artist, and led to the most interesting calling out letter of all time in MRR, where they are accused of being crypto-fascist for referencing alchemists and mystics that would later be incorporated by Volk theory and Nazi occultists.
See ECOLI, that is interesting provocation, and while it isn’t treading any new ground (see the career of DEATH IN JUNE) it makes your attempts look downright immature.
So embarrassing.
