Spittin' Wicked Randomness, Vol. 14

Sunday afternoon I was dropping some videos off at Blockbuster (I know, I know) on the way to get groceries. As I went through the intersection of Colorado and Eagle Rock, I heard some kind of loud crash. I looked around me, didn't see anything, and then looked in my rearview. From what I could tell, someone had run the red light at full speed, crashed into the side of the front end of the car behind me, smashing the shit out of it, and kept going. Missed me by this much. It looked pretty bad: hood bent up, steam rising from the engine. I thought about going over for a better look as I dropped the DVD's off, but decided it was just a car accident, not that interesting. As I pulled back onto the main road, I saw the rest of the story: a minivan (or maybe it was an SUV...not sure) had crashed smack, dab into the doorway of SWORK! Apparantly, the woman driving the van had a seizure while driving down the road. 5 people (the drivers of both cars, a guy standing on the sidewalk, and a couple inside the doorway) were injured. So it's pretty sad that my first thought was to kick myself for not having my camera with me.

I saw American Hardcore last week. If I was starting to have a more positive outlook on the early 80's hardcore scene, this doc definitely cured me of it. Reminded me just how much the assholes dominated that scene. I do still think that hardcore in Southern California and across America from about 1980-84 produced some of the greatest records ever made. But it's an interesting contrast to the CBGB's scene, where you had maybe 10 bands, and at least half of them made one of the greatest rock n roll records of all time. In hardcore, there might have been 20 or 50 bands that made an incredible record (even if it was just a 7"), but they were almost drowned by 1,000 shitty bands that should never have been let into a recording studio. It was also weird that the documentary spends a lot of time focusing on bands that I wouldn't consider very signifigant. I mean, in an underground scene, everyone has their own idea of who's important, since there are no consensus "hits," and there are bands that were among my favorites (say, White Flag or The Nip Drivers) that weren't very big, but I've never thought of SS Decontrol, Gangreen or The Cro-Mags as being very important (if they were gonna spend that much time on the Boston scene, I would have preferred them to talk to The Freeze, who were certainly more popular among the people I hung out with). At one point it's even posited that The Cro-Mags were the quintessential hardcore group. Huh???

At any rate, I felt like it failed to connect hardcore with earlier or later punk, as if it just existed in this vaccum, and also failed in representing zines, collage art, and some of the other aspects of the scene. And Mike Watt is funny-lookin'.

Dangerhouse singles at 7"Punk. I think The Avengers are my new favorite obscure U.S. punk band. Here's some more cool tunes. Hmm, the melody to that first song sounds familiar...

NPR: former Lovedolls bassist Abby Travis has a new "Cabaret Pop" album out!

Never heard of this movie before, but I NEED to see it! This one looks good, too.

"I started out with one premise: The Surrealists have already won!" (my new motto)

Anyway, watch this, because I think it might be vaguely important...