MIKE LESLIE - Top Ten of 2012

   Mike came into my life as a legitimate fan letter writer (the only one!) to my old band 10 years ago, but we soon became legitimate friends at a time when I had a hard time letting new people into my life. Since then, he's had a junk shop named after him, designed oodles of skate decks (one of which I commissioned), continued playing in THE TERRIBLES (a band he has been in since 9th grade) and started a new awesome band called FUNERAL CONE (west coast tour in April!). He also draws a bunch of crazy shit that is all in 3-D! He is also a very sweet and dear friend. I'm glad this man is in my life and if you don't know him, you're seriously missing out.

Top Ten Two Thousand Twelve By Mike Leslie 

 1. FINAL FRONTIERS"Pony Up" Cassette. Best friends from Burlington VT, Serge Wiltshire and Pete Wackernagel, front a band not unlike ONION FLAVORED RINGS, jangly, about love, but more about small displacement engine motorcycles, and cross country skiing... Serge and Pete are not only best friends, but have the exact same voice, and sing the exact same thing, so it sounds like a chorus pedal or double tracked vocals, but I assure you, I saw them three times this year, it is real. I was a little disappointed by their newer songs, dipping their toes into vocal harmonies, but they are not on this release, and I'm a staunch conservative in this realm. Saw them for the first time over the summer, when their van broke down on the way to Worcester, they were so close to home, the drummer just walked back, but Pete and Serge hitched the four hour drive, and recruited a replacement drummer when they got here. PS: They cover the Jurassic Park theme.

 2. NEON PISS "Close the Door/Burn" This 7" was mailed in bulk to my house when NEON PISS was in the northeast, and they gave me a copy in exchange for not stealing all of them! This is my favorite release by them, it's darker and surfier, and maybe Kyle is using that new amp, but it has the best guitar sound, it also has my favorite guitar leads.

(ed note: The records mailed to Mr Leslie were 50 test pressings. The real record will be out on Vinyl Rites soon. Pictured above is the cover with color embellishments by Mike)

 3. Building 19 "Famous Monsters of Filmland 2012 Calender" This yearly release from my favorite New England closeout chain store, is just as good 2011's Olde Time Classic TV Calender, and on par with 2013's Museum of Fine Arts 2013 Calender, they all feature the art of Mat Brown (Building 19 in house artist), and owner Jerry Ellis as Darth Saver or Discount Dracula. The art is a weird combination of actual drawings and photoshop, but they make up for it in jokes, having something for each day (be it a holiday, or today for example, the day Nancy Kerrigan was attacked), but most importantly it features an extra January, just when you need it, thirteen months! Also it's only a dollar...

 4. Hurricanes Leslie and Michael This was pretty incredible personally, my Mom sent me an email with this image (below), and I had an awesome weekend of surfing on my storm! It even chipped my teeth!

5. WHO KILLED SPIKEY JACKET L.P. Historian and Cryptozoologist fronted street punk band finally put out their L.P. Limited to a pressing of 1,000 with 700 on pink, and a limited 300 on black vinyl (whoops). This record is perfect, though I agree with about half the message. It is a more coherent TOM AND BOOT BOYS. Bring a bomb shelter.

 6. Negi-NegiThis is a space above local teenagers Asa and Nori's Mom's weaving studio in Worcester. Over the summer they started booking shows there, usually 2 older established local bands, and 3-4 local bands of teenagers from their school. I am easily twice the age of everyone at these shows, they are always free, a pizza collection is taken up, snacks and soda are provided, and no alcohol or drugs. Everyone dances and performs with complete lack of inhibition, it's beautiful...

 7. Scaphoid Surgery March 16, 2012 Dr. David Kim reunited my poor pieces of scaphoid bone (a peanut shaped wrist bone) with a surgical screw, that I had broken maybe 10 years ago. They shut my arm off with drugs and put it behind a curtain, and at one point hit it with a hammer and chisel! (bone graft) I was freaked out about recovery, but played guitar a week later. See Proximal Row Carpectomy, getting this in 3 days on the other wrist...

 8. HOLOGRAMS L.P. Really psyched to fall into this record. Played a show with this Swedish band, sound unheard in Boston. I was pleasantly surprised. Sounds like Oi! with a synth, kinda like Warsaw. Oi! Division

 9. Brick Oven Pizza Factory "Kid's Pizza" Actually didn't try this until January 3rd, but heard about it through my bandmates, Jamie and Kelly, who are also gastronauts like myself. The pizza itself is a regular pizza with mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers on it. I split this with a visiting friend, Andrew, and we were both super hungry, which attributed to this seemingly poor food choice. It was actually really good!

 10. Nancy is Happy: The Complete Dailies 1946-1948 I had been waiting so long for this to come out, Nancy is THE BEST! Got it from the library on inter-library loan.

BLAIR MENACE - Top Ten of 2012

   I think I've known this man for almost 20 years now. I met him at a punk show in a bar in northern Alabama that let underage kids in. He said he liked my homemade RIP-OFFS patch on the back of my jacket. I knew I had a new friend, but at the time I didn't know it would be a friend for life. Blair and I have seen a lot of rough times, but also a lot of good ones....but mostly rough ones for some reason. We're southerners. It comes with the territory. I've learned by example from Blair about the many ways that you can let the negativity roll off of you and keep moving forward. He's an inspiring man and a howling werewolf. Be sure to check out Menace for tons of his amazing art, writing, videos, music, etc....and he even tells you (well, sorta) how to make a microphone out of a beer can.

BLAIR MENACE'S TOP TEN OF 2012

• CHRISTIAN MISTRESS - Possession: It’s pretty reductive to describe a band by saying they're "like x singing for y" so I won't tell you these guys sound like Mia Zapata singing for DIAMONDHEAD. Instead I'll just say that while they are firmly rooted in the NWOBHM so many bands are mining these days, they have a punk energy and honesty that separates them from the cheeseball hipster-bait bands like THE SWORD and WHITE WIZZARD. There's not a drop of irony or insincerity here – just guts and soul and beauty (and guitar solos).

•  THEE OH SEES - Putrifiers II: These guys still put out like two LPs a year, with astonishing consistency and variety. This one's a step away from the gonzo garage stuff of their last couple and toward a surfy krautrock vibe, with some weird bedroom mutant folk stirred in. Violins, flutes, and other non-rock stuff weave in and out with the guitars, and the multi-layered vocals sound both alien and inviting.

•  FURZE - Psych Minus Space Control: Furze is a black metal expatriate who has evolved over the years into a sort of cosmic space-rock one man band. Most of the musical trappings of black metal are absent at this point, but the seething evil atmosphere and impenetrable distance are still there. There's nods to BLACK SABBATH, DEEP PURPLE, and BLUE CHEER, but more than anything it sounds like what I imagine HAWKWIND would have played if they had hooked up with H.P. Lovecraft and moved into his mother's attic, instead of doing acid and shagging groupies with Michael Moorcock. It's almost entirely instrumental, making the occasional burst of gibberish or mad laughter all the more unsettling

•  WITCH MOUNTAIN - Cauldron of the Wild: Bluesy, female-fronted doom metal with a kind of Old West swagger and bravado. Often this style of music will either be mostly instrumental with the vocals as an afterthought, or a strong singer will be backed by forgettable, repetitive Sabbath ripoffs. Not so with these guys – not by a long shot. The singer has an astounding weight and presence in her voice (maybe the loudest singer I've ever seen live), and the band is unusually tight, adventurous, and subtle in a sub-genre where these adjectives rarely apply.

•  BURNING LOVE - Rotten Thing to Say: Gimmick-free hardcore that neither sounds like third wave TRAGEDY wannabes or BLACK BREATH d-beat clones. Similar to POISON IDEA or TURBONEGRO's adaptation of hardcore to the framework of so-called “classic rock,” these guys back off the speed a bit to settle into a kind of mid-tempo groove that's more crushing than fifty grind bands trying to out-spazz each other. The lyrics are thoughtful, dense, and abstract, too – this is one of those albums where you can sit and read the lyrics sheet along with it and get lost in the darkness, or put it on headphones and chop firewood in double time.

•  MUJERES - Soft Gems: I don't really know much about these guys, other than the fact that I listened to their album every day for months. It's a bit of the old CRAMPS rockabilly, some BLACK LIPS hippie shit, maybe some HUSKER DU or REPLACEMENTS, and a penchant for writing songs that get stuck in my head even though I have no idea what they're about.

•  CLAMS CASINO – Instrumental Mixtape 2: Hazy, cut-and-paste hip hop beats made from weird lashed-together elements that shouldn't work, but do. Humming ambiance, crackling static, and operatic vocal samples clash with cartoonishly outsized bass and janky, busted snares, all reverberating around like the inside of an oil silo. Weirdly meditative and tense at the same time, as if the listener is constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. It reminds me of the ENNIO MORRICONE spaghetti western soundtracks without sounding like them at all.

•  Best Reissue:HICKEY - Various States of Disrepair– I picked this over the DICKS “Kill From the Heart” reissue, so you know I goddamn mean it.

•  Best Live Show DICK DALE in a tiny bar with like fifty people in attendance. I tried to stand close enough to absorb some of his mojo by osmosis. I don't know if it worked, but he gave me a pick! Narrowly beat out WANDA JACKSON and GRAVEYARD.

•  Best Book: Loom of Ruin – Sam McPheeters: When I sat down to make this list I realized that very few of the books I read were actually from 2012, and of those only this one seemed worth talking about. It got a pretty mixed reaction, including some skepticism from Mr. Harvester, but look: I fucking loved it. It's an intricate piece of clockwork , carefully engineered to bring about destruction on a massive scale. Say what you want about the barely-developed characters (true) or downer ending (I think there's a glimmer of hope mixed in there deep down) – it's ludicrously violent, impressive in scope, and funnier than anything else I've read in a long time. Fans of WRANGLER BRUTES will recognize characters and themes from their albums popping up, and anyone who's survived the horror of modern city dwelling will appreciate McPheeters' ambition and attention to detail.

PARASITES GO! - "Lettuce" - Tape - 2007

    As I said before, my friend Mike left me a bag of tapes sitting on the floor at Thrillhouse the last time he rolled through town and I've been slowly sifting through them. When I plopped this tape into the dynamic digitizing machine, I remembered that this band had written me years ago to help them out with a show in Indiana. I was gonna be on tour, so I steered them towards some friends for a show. I don't know if it worked out or not. I never heard anything about it. I never even listened to the band until now. As this tape played, I thought, "eh, this is pretty good...nothing too special." Then, I went in the kitchen to make my usual eggs/kale/potatoes combo and I could not get the chorus of "Lately" out of my head! You win this round, PARASITES GO! 

    I wasn't around the Bay Area for this era of local punk, but I heard that these guys put on a good show and were responsible for many lingering choruses in many a noggin. You will be afflicted with this same fate when you download this for yourself and let the pop-punk wave wash over you. Go ahead. 

   I am more of a fan of SOPORS, who came after (?) this band and shared some members. They put out a sprawling mess of an LP last year that was one of my favorites of 2011. Some of these guys have now moved on to an outfit called VIOLENT CHANGE, who I have yet to see, even though I've had a few chances. Color me stupid. What? Fuck it.

Download PARASITES GO!

If you live in the Bay Area, VIOLENT CHANGE is playing tonight at The Knockout.

New Awesome Blog That You Should Check Out

MUSIC NOT NOIZE

This blog is run by my friend and roommate, Matt. It focuses more on the international side of punk and it's also really informative. It's off to a great start and you should check it out.

ALEX TURNER - Top Ten of 2012

   Alex Turner..the man, the myth. I once had dinner with his parents (it's rare for me to meet any parents of my friends) and I think I was way more comfortable than he was. I was one of many people to talk him into moving to the Bay Area (it didn't take much convincing) and now I'm lucky to see him once a week. Our lives are busy, but I'm glad he lives so close. Someone take him on tour already because he is a wonderful roadie....just ask RVIVR, SON SKULL, NEON PISS, SNUGGLE, GLUE, SHOREBIRDS, PIPSQUEAK, RECKLESS, etc, etc......

ALEX TURNER'S TOP TEN OF 2012

In non-hierarchical order.

• Do Ya Hear We?  I've only ever been to Chattanooga on tour once. I went to this fest and had the best time. The people there are the nicest, most welcoming people. The bands that played were inspiring and perfect. Nobody complained about the out-of-towners or how it used to be better (at least that I heard.)
• Tacoma County Fair! Kinda the same as Do Ya Hear We but it was only one day and I lived in the NW for 14 years. I didn't watch a single band. A perfect day of old friends. 

• NEON PISS LP / Shows. Obligatory because this is Greg's blog? No. This record / band is really that good. Maybe the band I saw the most in 2012? Oakland, San Francisco, Portland and Minneapolis. (ed note: Seattle too?)
• NO STATIK LP / 7" / Shows There is magic (pure rage) in this band. I'm not friends with any of them and I kind of don't want to be. I'm sure they are all wonderful people and they are friends with my friends. There is something that helps uphold the mystique / mystery by being a little further away. Know what I mean? I mean, they can play an afternoon show at the (unfun zone of) 1-2-3-4-Go Records and I will still lose my shit. 

• SON SKULL - Wiped Clean LP This is what I want to listen to when I ride my bike home from Bart after a shitty day at work and a hate filled Bart ride. Also some of the best people that I miss the most. (their last (to date) show was in 2011, but it was really transcendent and the best time i've ever had with hundreds of people in a downpour).
• FROZEN TEENS LP/Shows. If you were to ask me what was so great about this album I couldn't begin to explain it, I don't understand it. The songs are just simple and honest. I also managed to see them twice (Chattanooga & Minneapolis) both were great.

• GYBE!@ Great American Music Hall I'll be honest, I ate a bunch of mushrooms and it was great. also Pierced Arrows played which was cool/strange. 
• NEUROSIS @ Oakland Metro I guess technically they didn't play till after midnight on new years. I went to this nye show alone and only knew a small handful of people there, but I didn't feel alone. A great way to start the new year. 
• Not going on tour at all this year. Still traveling and getting to spend real time with my friends around the country (Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Minneapolis, Asheville, NYC). Not to be forgotten my wonderful house and friends in oakland/san francisco and this year it feeling like home. 
• My friends kids. I can't really see myself having children anytime (soon?). But the time I get to spend with Lilly, Frida, Dakota, Calliope, Rainer, Amah, Teddy, and Asa is truly special to me.

 Honorable mention: WEIRD TV 12", LIVID tape, DOGJAW lp, WHITE LUNG lp, CRAZY SPIRIT lp, SICKOIDS lp, SPIRITUAL WARIORS live/tape, DISPLEASURE last show, NU SENSAE @ rca, 4 shows in one day (Gilman record swap, VACCUUM @ parkside, RED DONS/ ESTRANGED @ 1234, HOT TEARS @ 37th st, and SPIRITUAL WARRIORS @ rec center)

E. CONNER - Top Ten of 2012

   E. and I were once thrust into a school bus together and toured for a month with 35 other people. It was a miserable experience and I spent much of the time drunk on whiskey, making fun of her band (once so incisively that it made her guitarist cry). Still, every night, a room full of punks would scream along with their songs, no matter how I felt. (p.s., I was a jerk) Now it's years past that time and E. churns out art, writing and music that is provocative, thoughtful and defiant all at once (as she was in the past as well). Her defunct band, DISPLEASURE put out a tape that is one of my favorite of the year. The moral of all this? Be careful. The people you make fun of today could be writing all of your anthems of tomorrow. Don't be a shithead.

E. CONNER'S TOP TEN OF 2012

I don’t know how hard and fast I believe in “years” or “time” or “lists” but here is some stuff that happened in the past 365 “days” or one “earth” revolution around the “sun”.

• Lies Journal. LIES affirms everything I’ve been thinking about for the past year. All the sex negativity, hate for pigs, and historical relevance that we are so frequently denied. Feminism is hard. It’s evolution in popular culture is fucking disgusting. It’s hard to find so much that you can relate to in one place. LIES opens up by telling us “EVERYTHING WE WRITE WILL BE USED AGAINST US” it already knows so she doesn’t care. LIES wants us to go there. To push beyond couple forms, to question sub/cultural notions of safety and innocence and to remember a history too often ignored. To see the culture/sex wars bend into a million facets and inherit so much more than a dichotomy but, as Ms. Haraway would say, a resonance. 

•  Cultural Context // Feminist Study Group: I dropped out of school officially when I was 16 and but for a stint in jail school I probably would have bounced much earlier. I’ve always been a reader/learner but it’s been an isolated endeavor or something I occasionally used to get laid (don’t hate). Me and some friends started a feminist study group this fall. We Learning socially has been what this year did for me the most. While the study group has gone slack I’m looking to pick it back up again soon.

•  SCAM #9: The Story of BLACK FLAG's Damaged. I wouldn’t have finished the last copy of my zine if Erick hadn’t told me we could have a zine release party at the same time. He never did finish it by then but we released together nonetheless. Him with a slideshow and talk and me with my dinky rag. We did a mutual performance together that was a little slapdash but ever inspired! With fabrications that rendered us blind and deaf we jumped around the little gallery/zine shop atonally singing Black Flag’s Room 13. Erick knocked art off the walls and I’m pretty sure I was blushing the whole time. More importantly, Erick did finally write a zine about the making of Black Flag’s first full length album. It illuminates so many unknown factors about the environment from whence the Flag was forged. Noir L.A. with corrupt politicians, disillusioned youth, neon, and oh! the hills. While Erick chose to stray from other mysteries (like, where the fuck did Dez go hat shopping??) this is a bang up piece of relevant journalism for anyone who laid in their room listening to Rats Eyes over and over and over. 

• Clarice Lispector- The Passion According to G.H.:  This book certainly wasn’t written in the past year but New Directions just re-printed all of Ms. Lispector’s novels with new translations this summer. I first got hip to Clarice from Helene Cixous’ Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. The novel is about the in-brain crisis of a bourgeois sculptress from Rio De Janeiro. Many focus on Ms. Lispector’s beauty. Indeed, all of the re-printed novels fit together to form a stunning portrait of the writer as a younger woman. However this novel is about anything but conventional beauty. Her introduction asks for one to have a fully formed soul in order to encounter this novel properly. She incites your own existential crisis before you even become engaged. Lispector confronts moral dualities in this novel. The sculptress has crushed a cockroach in an armoire door. Struck by the brutality of the acts & confronted by her entire life it leads up to one of the most heartbreaking and kind of gross acts one could choose to make. This precedes the female existential crisis novels of this year and surpasses them in so many ways too. Lispector I Love You. 

•  INDEX Demo:  I love index. ‘Nuff said. 

•  Olivia Horvath:  I started following Olivia’s tumblr a while back and then we traded zines the old fashioned way. Olivia’s comics and art are informed by philosophy, weed, magic, and sex. That makes it seem more simplistic than it truly is. They just have a capacity to open up the signifiers we take for granted and make them mean so much more. Olivia is a genius babe to watch out for.

•  East Bay Anarchist Book Fair: This book fair was different. It was organized around different “Conversations” which were informed by a reader provided online and at local spots around town. Me and Ian facilitated a talk on PLEASURE which was to be informed by Guy Hocquengham’s Destroy Sexuality and a Foucault interview. The talk elevated to being about stuck between hate for everything and refusal of commodification of spirit. Human Strike How Does That Shit Work? It rained and rained but I smoked weed with Patrick and ate kimchee buns and got a bunch of cool shit. Stay Cool East Bay. 

•  The Failed Apocalypse: The world didn’t “end” so everything is still fucking terrible. There is no way out... just keep breathing and making paper mache to mend the torn hymens of your heart, fuckers. Live To Spite Every Shitty Mother Fucker Out There That’s Trying To Slowly Kill You, or don’t do it at all. 

•  MOSS ICON Discography: I needed this record to come out when it did. It will curse everyone else like it’s cursed me for the past 10 years. I walk around with the same bassline stuck in my head screaming to myself that I’m Back Sleeping Or Fucking Or Something.

•  Xara Thustra- “FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN ARTISTS IS AN EQUATION OF LOVE AND SURVIVAL”: Xara makes a world I want to live in. Bright negativity, muted love love love, bloody friends, backwards and forwards, smiley faces with knives and shit. This hefty book is the great american novel for fuckwads who hate the man. Cover me in grandma’s afghan and put a thumb up my ass I’m done. 

DAN BECKMAN - Top 10 of 2012

Dan and Olai in Maine. Photo by Amy Moon.

   I've known Dan for at least 12 years now and it seems like he's gotten more inspiring to me with each passing day. Whether it's independently releasing his own mind-bending music (with IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT, UKE OF SPACES and many more), going on tour in a box truck that runs on vegetable oil or just setting an example by keeping his life seemingly simple and gracious, I am constantly floored by the things he puts into this world. In addition to running Turned Word Records, he also married one of my favorite artists of all time and produced a child that somehow seems to hold all of the world's tranquility in his eyes. Whoa. 

DAN BECKMAN'S TOP TEN OF 2012

....in no particular order.

1. BR GARM "The 78th Morning Tide" LP

2. BIG BLOOD "Old Time Primitives" Cassette

3. JOSEPHINE FOSTER - "Blood Rushing" LP/CD/DL

4. Visiting my mother in Boise, Idaho twice!

5. D.J. RUPTURE'S MUDD UP! Podcast and Radio show on WFMU.

6. MICHAEL HURLEY - "Back Home With Drifting Woods"  LP on Mississippi Records.

7. TRACEY TRANCE - "Pyper Kub" LP on Turned Word Records.

8. Listening to my three year old child sing...

9. Attending the End Of The World's Fair in Spillcorn, North Carolina. Great photos by Faythe Levine on her Flickr.

10. Playing Western Mass dates with BIG BLOOD and the unforgettable night at The Dream Away Lodge.

SICARII - Unreleased Stuff - 2005

   No art. No fanfare. Today's entry is submitted and written by my good friend, Alex Turner....

   SICARII was a punk / anarchist band in Olympia, WA in the early 2000's. This is a recording they did after they all ended up in Asheville, NC in the mid-2000's. It was never released. Jay-Ro recorded it and I think somebody moved away before they got around to finishing the mix of everything. They are still some of my best friends; people I fly around the country to visit. This band reminds me of the positive aspects of the fucked up punk houses we all lived in. As they say, "It was the best of times / It was the worst of times." So much love. So much coffee. So many bagels and soy dogs. Too much beer. "Accident Prone" on repeat, a rat population that drove us to drink more, OP IVY dance parties, time spent around the wood stove...you get the idea. Regardless, this recording was made after all that. They reformed for a year or so in Asheville. I was never in town to see them as a North Carolina band, but this recording shouldn't be lost. The LP that came out when they were an Olympia band is good and if you're paying attention, you can still find one (There is one new [???] copy at Thrillhouse for $6.)

Download SICARII
Updated Feb 2014

   Matt now lives in Iowa City, going to graduate school. Tammy lives in Seattle, spending time with her nieces, climbing mountains, and spends as much time in nature as we all really should. Eli lives in Northhampton and takes care of his cute-as-fuck kid, Asa. Parker is in a black metal band who's name escapes me.

LEGS - Top Ten of 2012

   I can be a fairly negative person, but over the last year I've been trying to make an effort to not let that negativity take over needed space in my brain. It's easy to get bogged down by all the bullshit in this world. It's also an easy road to just let it bog you down and talk shit all the time. I want to focus on the positive. I also like lists. A lot. I asked a bunch of my friends to write out their top ten lists for 2012. I told them that it could be about music, but it could also be about their lives...It could even just be about books...I don't care, as long as it's about things that kept them going this year towards a future that was never supposed to happen.
  First up is  Legs from Vancouver, BC (that's in Canada, ya'll) who went from being my show-booking contact to a fast friend and excellent roadie. She knows where to get the best samosas and always has a good story to tell. She also plays guitar and sings in the wonderful band, SIREN SONGS, who I once saw play to 100 wasted freaks in a smokey room at 4am. 

LEGS' TOP TEN OF 2012

1. DTES Ladies Rock Camp, a community event that involved women from the neighborhood spending a week learning an instrument (piano, bass, guitar, vocals, percussion), forming a band and writing a song. At the end of the week, there was showcase for all the bands to perform their songs. I got to teach a bass workshop. It was the first workshop I've ever taught in my life! It was super frightening but super amazing and rewarding and rad.

2. FLESHIES at Awesome Fest in San Diego. It was a fucking whirlwind of drinking 40 ozs and stumbling between El Cajon Blvd and University Ave. I don't really remember a lot of the sets I saw, but FLESHIES was a highlight for sure. SIREN SONGS weren't allowed to play the pre-fest show because the bouncers were on a power trip and some of our band members were "too drunk" to be in the bar. Nathan lost his voice completely from screaming. We got kicked out of out hotel room for being over-capacity (by like 25 people) and we lost a hubcap in the drunk-driving getaway. BUT, watching John spend 3/4's of his set carried through the air by people screaming along to the words was super awesome. For a brief second during the set, there was a guy beside me who had the exact same crossword tattoo in the same spot on his arm, but he didn't understand my emphatic gesturing at the time. Where did you go, crossword guy?!

3. AYE NAKO at Ladyfest Boston. I'd never been to Ladyfest before, let alone a three day fest where most of the attendees and performers weren't consuming alcohol before, during and after the show. It was refreshing and renewed my faith in punks and punk itself. It was refreshing that everything didn't have to be wasted moshing to D-beat (don't get me wrong. I'm a strong supporter of that too) or figuring out how to sneak in half a can of warm swill or getting caught at it and having it TOTALLY ruin your night . I got to walk around the Harvard and MIT campuses, which made me feel like I was possibly part of a Ben Affleck movie. AYE NAKO blew me away! I bought a bunch of their tapes and developed a minor guitar-crush on the guitar player. I still listen to their demo back to back for days at a time. Honourable mention goes to SICK FIX, who fucking ripped it....lady fronted local hardcore. Sick as fuck. (ed note: AYE NAKO just recorded a bunch of new songs at a studio in Massachusetts. Updates here)

4. A recent stint of sobriety which started after my 26th birthday and continues as I type this. I've been drinking pretty constantly for most of my adult life, so it feels nice to take a break. What is even nicer is that it hasn't been that hard, and despite the moments of loneliness, depression and isolation, the craving for alcohol has been non-existent. Unfortunately, I'm left with tons of headspace to over think shit and let my anxiety gang up on me and worry about what I'm "going to do for the rest of my life." Other than that, it's been great.

5. Riding shotgun in the van and smoking out the window. SIREN SONGS...getting to tour with my best friends and breaking down mechanically, emotionally and musically at every interval. 

6. MURMURS demo tape // NEON PISS live at the Moontower (window smashers!!)

7.  Poutine pizza!! I tried it. I liked it. I don't know if I will eat it again, but it was there for a single moment on a front stoop at 1 or 2 in the salty, salty morning. 

8. The end of my first real relationship of more than a year. . Not exactly a super happy top ten point, but I learned from it and am still learning how to be better to the people I choose to have in my life...and who choose to have me in theirs. 

9. CRIMINAL CODE live // SPIRITUAL WARRIORS live at 360 Glen.

10. The NW punk scene, spending time in Olympia (so much love) along with Seattle and Tacoma. I have a super big crush on Washington right now, but it feels like the whole NW area has a lot going on in terms of bands and people getting shit done. 

Thanks, Legs!

I will be posting these sporadically throughout the month of January.

FUCK YEA! AVOCADO / MAURICE'S LITTLE BASTARDS - Split - Tape - 2001

   Morgan (from SHARP KNIFE, STAMPEDE and TULSA), Dean (also from STAMPEDE and LOS RABBIS) teamed up with a person named Zane (who remains mysterious to me) to bring you this ridiculously monikered band, FUCK YEA! AVOCADO...actually, come to think of it, it's not that ridiculous. If you live in San Francisco, buy avocados from the corner store and put them in your sandwich, you'd probably feel the same way. Avocados are different out here. Trust me on this one.
   Anyway, FUCK YEA! AVOCADO were around for the shortest of times out here in SF and put out this screamy tape of fucked up sounding, breakneck-speed, melodic punk. According to Morgan, there is a VHS tape somewhere of their one tour on the Northwest, where every show was a renegade / generator show. In Portland, they played on a half-sunken pirate ship. In Seattle, they played on the street. On the ferry to Bainbridge Island, they played in the bathroom...etc,etc...
    Speaking of Bainbridge Island, that is where MAURICE'S LITTLE BASTARDS hailed from. I hardly know anything about them except they took their clothes off a lot and their songs seem to be about masturbation and stuff. Fast, catchy punk. Maybe you'll like it? Justin from this band went on to play in CLOROX GIRLS.

DOWNLOAD
UPDATED 3/2015

I can only describe the sound quality as "assy"

This tape comes from the mysterious paper bag of Mike Wilson.