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Archive for the Features Category
On Tyranny: Meatwound’s Mantra Is ‘Fuck the Cops – and the Government Too’
Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny with tags authoritarianism, Daniel Wallace, dictator, disappeared, Donald Trump, Meatwound, On Tyranny, police state, trump on 09/01/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Acerbic. Snotty. Sarcastic. Ruthless. Hard-hitting. There are a lot of adjectives that could be applied more gently to the ear than the name of the band in question, Meatwound. Spawned 10 years ago ago in one of the crappiest cities in the country, Tampa, Florida, The Bad Penny has wanted to catch up with this band since the release of their 2015 debut, Addio.
The skronky, snarky, snarly – have we exhausted our cache of descriptors yet? – crew immediately drew comparisons to a lot of our favorite bands. But we’re gonna show Meatwound some respect by saying they are a uniquely awesome slab of protein-rich noise-rock and encourage you to listen to the many songs of theirs embedded in this post. Most are housed on their latest record, Macho, which they coughed up in mid-July.
The Bad Penny talked with Meatwound vocalist Daniel Wallace in mid-May, just two months after the detention of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and before shit got even crazier – you know, the deployment of the U.S. Marines to the streets of L.A., Trump bombing Iran, Mahmoud Khalil was finally freed, the U.S. blocked global agreements for a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, all that good stuff.
And yet, Wallace’s remarks, stances and predictions all still, terrifyingly, hold up as true for the most part.
(Meatwound also features guitarist Ari Barros, bassist/programmer Mariano Iglesias and drummer Dimitri Stoyanov.)
Continue readingDoppelgängers: Louis CK’s and David Cross’ Nearly Identical Jokes on Male Rollerbladers
Posted in Comedy, Doppelgängers, Essays, Features with tags David Cross, Louis C.K. on 08/31/2025 by Kurt OrzeckLouis 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.
On Tyranny: ‘You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read This Book?’ Author Andrew Laties Rails Against Book Bans
Posted in Features, On Tyranny, What You Readin' For? with tags Andrew Laties, authoritarianism, censorship, Donald Trump, fascism, First Amendment, On Tyranny, trump on 08/31/2025 by Kurt Orzeck“The majority of Americans are angry about this idiocy. There will come a tipping point.
The majority will fight back and win.”
-Andrew Laties
Andrew Laties isn’t your typical free-speech advocate. The decorated author co-founded the annual Easton Book Festival in Pennsylvania, The Children’s Bookstore in Chicago, the Chicago Children’s Museum Store and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art Bookstore in Massachusetts. In some respects, he is Donald Trump’s greatest nemesis: He is omnipresent thanks to the aforementioned institutions he established across the country, he won’t be bullied (as he was in the past), he doesn’t mince words or self-censor but rather speaks from the heart with unfiltered ferocity, he is an outspoken champion of free-speech who refuses to be silenced, and he is prepared to battle the Trump administration’s book bans to the bitter end.
In other words, Laties is one of us. Even if you don’t place censorship and book bans high on your list of priorities, whether you deem the issues to be political or not, he’s fighting for your rights too. His previously detailed his crusade in the book Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Businesses Represent Everything You Want to Fight For – From Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities. Last month, he unveiled his latest work, the very timely You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read This Book? Our Hundred-Year Children’s-Literature Revolution and How We’ll Keep Fighting to Support Our Families’ Right to Read.
When Laties reached out to The Bad Penny, it was a no-brainer to invite him to participate in our ongoing series On Tyranny, inspired by the Timothy Snyder handbook of the same name. Here is the exchange in which we thoroughly enjoyed partaking today with Laties, a hero in the sickening, unbelievable and yet very real battle to save democracy for us all, and not just the livelihoods of artists and dissenters, but their right to exist in American society.
Continue readingOn Tyranny: John Lennon and Yoko Ono Were Wrong; Karma Does Not Exist
Posted in Essays, Features, On Tyranny, Videos with tags Donald Trump, John Lennon, karma, Plastic Ono Band, Power to the People, trump, Yoko Ono on 08/30/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
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’
Doppelgängers: David Cronenberg’s ‘Scanners’ and Brian De Palma’s ‘The Fury’
Posted in Doppelgängers, Essays, Features with tags Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg, Scanners, The Fury on 08/30/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
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.
Zaq Baker Finds Self-Worth Amid Mental Health Struggles, Writing First Novel
Posted in Features, Interviews, What You Readin' For? with tags Zaq Baker on 08/05/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
“There’s a lot of danger in saying ‘I feel better now,’ because I [wrote a novel or recorded an album]. There’s like a tenuousness to that, especially in music. [Those feelings of pride] have an arc that goes down eventually.” -Zaq Baker
Continue readingExclusive: Mawiza Reveal Origin of Eco-Themed Collabo With Gojira Frontman
Posted in Exclusives, Features, Interviews, On Tyranny with tags environment, Gojira, Mawiza on 07/30/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Solidarity is hardly a new concept to Mawiza, an indigenous metal/folk group born and bred in sacred Mapuche Nation lands in Chile. In 1861-’83, the military staged campaigns and an occupation of the Araucanía Region in central Chile under the Orwellian-sounding “Pacification of Araucanía.” The indigenous community had to band together if they wanted a chance to survive the military incursion. Nevertheless, the brutal invasion paved the way for notorious, U.S.-backed Augusto Pinochet’s military coup about 100 years later.
Formed in 2014, Mawiza’s stated goal — beyond concocting an entirely original sound that fuses metal with Mapuche folk music — is “to preserve ancestral roots, rescue indigenous moral values and to promote biodiversity conservation, guided by the indigenous worldview and struggle.” (Read more about the band and its mission in an interview with Mawiza vocalist and rhythm guitarist Awka, as part of our ongoing series On Tyranny.)
As Mawiza’s career progressed, the band found that another critical issue is inherent in indigenous communities valiantly attempting to preserve their culture and land: the environment. Fortuitously, the band drew attention and, subsequently, ardent support, from a band more than 7,000 miles away that is considered metal royalty across the globe: Gojira. In its lyrics for songs ranging from “Global Warming” to “Toxic Garbage Island” to the entirety of 2005’s From Mars to Sirius, the French progressive-metal band makes it a top priority to educate their fans about eco-awareness.
Mawiza and Gojira bonded even more closely when the latter band took the former one under their wing and performed together live. Cementing their friendship and admiration for each other, Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier traveled to the Mapuche community to record his featured spot on “Ti Inan Paw-Pawkan,” the first single from Mawiza’s new album ÜL, which Season of Mist issued 12 days ago.
Around the same time, The Bad Penny communicated exclusively with Awka to learn more about “Ti Inan Paw-Pawkan” and how it came about.
Continue reading5 Reminders About Punk Rock’s Core Principles
Posted in Essays, Features, On Tyranny with tags punk rock on 07/29/2025 by Kurt OrzeckSay 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.
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