Deafheaven’s setlist from their show at Mardi Gras in Boise on 3.25.17
When Deafheaven played their first show in Boise on March 25 – at Mardi Gras, a venue typically reserved for wedding functions – they provided the five-day Treefort Music Fest with its only dose of shoe-gazing black metal. Continue reading
As our nation rapidly transforms into Authoritarian America, artists – who are typically among the first to be targeted when a dictatorship takes control of a country – are relocating to countries where their right to free speech is still protected.
One of the more prominent indie-rock artists to make the move is Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow, who relocated to Portugal earlier this year, according to multiple sources who recently confirmed the news to The Bad Penny. None of the sources said outright that Trump’s reclaiming of the presidency was their motivating factor for Yow fleeing the U.S., however.
When yours truly interviewed Yow and Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison last year for a feature on FLOOD, the vocalist whose lyrics were historically apolitical admitted that he felt boxed in by the inexorable partisan strife in America and said he was compelled to address current events on the band’s comeback record, Rack.
“A larger percentage of the lyrics than I wished were based on the political climate in the U.S. for the last seven or eight years,” he confided in a video conference call.
Continue reading
We like country too. Yes, really. Well, sometimes. When it’s good. Because a lot of it isn’t. Then again, a lot of music in a lot of genres isn’t good. On the other hand, a lot of music in a lot of genres is good. Weird how that works.
Moving on.
We’re having a kanipshin after hearing the new project by Alex Maas of the Black Angels and self-described Heartless Bastard Erika Wennerstrom. It’s called Sweet Tea and sounds sweet as can be: Get converted by this touching live cover of Tim Harden’s “If I Were a Carpenter”:
If you’re even fairly familiar with raunchy comedy, “The Aristocrats,” an ever-evolving running joke so dirty that comics used to only tell it to each other behind closed doors, probably rings a bell. The jape varies in length, vulgarity, structure, plot and tone, depending on whichever comedian is telling their version of it. But baked into the joke are, unwaveringly, graphic scenes of a family engaging in scatological, sordid and smutty behavior during an audition in a misguided effort to win over an agent to book their stage act. And the punch line always remains the same, with the family revealing at the end of the audition that their stage name is “The Aristocrats.”
Continue readingLouis C.K. and David Cross were roommates in the ’90s, so it’s not shocking that they came up with nearly the exact same bit on men with mustaches rollerblading in public with a sense of superiority to those they passed on the sidewalk.
From David Cross’ comedy album Shut Up, You Fucking Baby (2002):
From Louis C.K.’s first full-length broadcast special, Shameless (2007):
This post is dedicated to Dan Stevenson.
Today marks the 53rd anniversary of “Power to the People,” a performance by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band. As a nation, we are thirsting for our own contemporary music megastars (Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Drake, Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny, etc.) to re-create such an event at a time even more perilous than when the peace activists of yore performed at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Side note: The whole “karma” concept that Lennon and Ono preached? Yeah, that’s proven to be a fallacy. No amount of suffering that could befall Donald Trump from here on out would be commensurate with the amount of damage he’s done to our country, which will take many decades to repair.
Fortunately, Lennon isn’t around to bear witness to the atrocities that are occurring every day in the U.S.
Check out these previous installments of The Bad Penny’s On Tyranny series:
• Poll: Are You Afraid of Attending Concerts as the Military Patrols US Cities?
• Haggus Frontman Blasts Punk Bands’ Silence on Gaza, ICE
• As US Citizens Get Disappeared and Terrorized, Chile’s Mawiza Reflects
• Punk Legends UK Subs Denied Entry Into US Due to Alleged Trump Criticism
• Kuwaiti Metal Artist Abzy Calls Hate ‘A Black Hole’
• Hungarian Black-Metallers Sear Bliss Lost ‘Freedom’ In Orbán’s Autocracy
• Necrofier Frontman Wonders ‘Is It Going to Be Like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’?’
• ‘People in America Have Blinders On,’ Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe Says
• Musicians Living Under Authoritarian Rule Speak Out
• Mark Mallman Says ‘Suffering Artists’ Are a Myth, Making Art Isn’t a ‘Job’
• Cellista: ‘Creating and Existing Under Trump’s America Is My Act of Radical Resistance’
Can’t seem to find much discussion about this online, but does anyone else notice that David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981) and Brian De Palma’s The Fury (1978) – both films that come very, very highly recommended – are virtually identical? Both movies revolve around young adults who possess telekinetic powers that can control people à la The Force from Star Wars. These outcasts keep their potentially threatening, manipulative abilities on the DL, find solace living in secret societies, and are hunted by malevolent thugs out to kill them.
The exploding cherry on top of this theory? How often do you see self-combustion sequences onscreen?
Scanners:
The Fury:
De Palma would be the obvious plagiaristic culprit here, as his 1981 John Travolta classic (not an oxymoron!), Blow-Out, copped copiously from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) – two even greater masterpieces. ‘Cept The Fury came out three years before Scanners, which Cronenberg himself wrote.
Please share any insights if you got ’em, so long as they don’t cause anyone’s head to explode.
Say what you will about the new identity of punk rock and the renewing of marriage vows between punk rock and corporate enterprise, here are a few reminders about what still lies at the heart of the movement:
1. Subservience, complacency and inaction in the face of authoritarianism, now the governing force in the United States — and its myriad and once-unimaginable horrors — is not punk rock.
2. Engaging in pay-to-play schemes that pads the pockets of music venue owners and managers, magazine editors and publishers, agents and promoters and publicists, and other industry types who profit off musicians, is not punk rock.
3. Propagating, platforming or even permitting racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and all related forms of hate and discrimination is not punk rock.
4. Increasing one’s personal gain at the expense of punk-rock bands and fans, whether it be through inflated ticket prices, ad revenue largesse and opportunistic financial benefits is not punk rock.
5. Taking advantage of or profiting unjustly off sincere, well-intentioned and therefore often vulnerable people who support punk-rock ethics is not punk-rock.
Cool? Cool.
The special 45th anniversary edition of The Big Takeover, one of the oldest and last-surviving punk-rock magazines, is now available here. The special issue features more contributions from yours truly than every before–and they’re exclusively featured in the magazine:
• a deep conversation with Michael Gira of Swans
• my second feature with drummer Todd Trainer, stemming from the first interview he gave after the passing of his beloved Shellac bandmate Steve Albini
• a dispatch from a “Fighting Oligarchy” event in Idaho that featured Built to Spill, Bernie Sanders and AOC (and drew national attention)
• my reviews of new releases by Airport 77s, Dez Dare, Librarians With Hickeys, Mdou Moctar, mssv, Onsetter, Pleasure Pill, Plight, Royal Chant and Unstable Shapes
The Bad Penny (beta) 