Declining the Decline

Last night I started watching The Decline of Western Civilization. This is the first one, filmed in 1979 and 1980, and I don't even think it's available on DVD. I snagged this one from the Internet and found it to be a fairly clear VHS rip. Wait, can you rip a VHS? I probably just meant "copy."

The film documents LA hardcore punk in its toddler years. The kids are brutal, just happy to have an outlet for all of their anger and frustration. It was like Fight Club before there was Fight Club. A whole generation of disillusioned youths, unable to constructively or progressively express themselves, are only able to destroy everything around them. And it sure looked violent and fun.

Except for X, who were brilliant in every way (apart from their self-tattooing skills), the scene's music sucks. The speedy bands sound like lawnmowers bouncing down a steep hill. The Germs sound awful live. But the hardcore movement was less about musical quality and more about vicious rebellion.

That's not to say the music is unlistenable. If I bust out early Black Flag in my car I'll be rockin' out (and driving way too fast). The music serves its purpose, and that purpose is to aggravate and accelerate.

But man, kids were retarded back then. I want to shake a lot of these people and tell them how stupid they are. But there is no use getting angry at the dimwits in a thirty-year-old film. These kids are now either 50 years-old or dead.

This is the old codger in me talking. Yapping.

I've accumulated some wisdom over the years, but I was young and mental once. I never used my fists, but I would've like to have watched the whole world burn to a too-loud soundtrack.

Youth is wasted on the young.

Darby Crash, frontman for the Germs, embodied this. He was living breathing walking talking self-destruction. And it's sad to see him plead for beers, talk about his drugs, and attempt to participate in this leaderless revolution in his plastered on-stage state. It's sadder still when you know the outcome: before the film was even released Crash intentionally overdosed on heroin. He was 22.

Rebellion is futile without an iota of self-preservation.
Self-sacrifice is worthless if nobody is inspired by it.

I can almost see it in Pat Smear's blank expression. It says, "Geez, I can't wait until I join the Foo Fighters."

I was going to watch the last half of the movie tonight, but I typed this instead. This really is a thought-provoking documentary, even if the punkers featured in the film haven't given things a whole lot of thought themselves.

And actually all of these thoughts I've laid down are unfinished and unrealized, but it's time for me to go to bed.

Really I'm just trying to put some space between posts about Phil Collins.

Part II: The Metal Years, is next on my imaginary queue.

The MP3.com Vault: Skankin' to the Beat

Remember when ska was cool? I suppose the genre has existed in several forms and movements since the 1960s, but in the 1990s punk-infused ska finally reached the mainstream and saturated radios and music channels. It was overkill, and by the time the new millennium rolled around everybody was sick of trumpets and up-beats.

But ska music is, above else, about having fun (except when it's about revolution... unless we're talking about a FUNvolution!), and in the early 2Ks there were still a handful of bands skankin' it up. There was no marketable advantage to being a ska band at this point, and those who were doing it were doing it for the loooove.

Or they just didn't have the heart to tell their brass section to go home.

I have here a couple of punk-ska-rock bands that, in true MP3.com fashion, never made it big. But they were willing to share their goodness with the world, and if we never bought their home-burned CDs then we at least should have given them a few minutes of time for a friendly listen.

That is, unless you think trombones are dumb. Then you're in the wrong place.

Buckledown had the advantage of appearing on at least two widely distributed compilations: Bettie Rocket's Ska Craze 2 and 7Ball's Gas Collection 14. And that is pretty much the extent of my Buckledown knowledge. They showed up, they rocked out, then they disappeared leaving only the shallowest of Internet imprints.
Buckledown - "Not Alone"

On the cheesier side of things there was this band called Open 24 Hours. As far as I know they only released one album, Before We Adjourn, in 2000. I don't remember how many songs they put up on MP3.com. Maybe just the one. But that one song would bounce around in my head for days. Listening to the track ten years later it sounds quaint and amateur, but there is something to be said about letting snotty punk kids bang away at their instruments and singing about the things that matter to them (i.e. girls). What I hear here are fun, simpler times. For a moment, I am someone. GO!

Open 24 Hours - "I Should've Been Paying Attention"

Another ska band I remember from the MP3.com days was Hook Line and Sinker. Again, I don't know much about them. I know they had a pretty good following, and I know I saw them at one of the Cornerstone Festivals years after I thought they had broken up. I don't have any .mp3s of theirs from back in the day, but you can find some six-year-old demos on Purevolume.

[You know what? Now that I look back at them, the bands at the tail end of the 3rd Wave ska movement had some terribly generic names. A rose by any other name, I suppose.]

Phil Phridays! -- Jesus He Knows Me

I listened to this song over and over (and over) as a kid. I can't say whether or not it shaped my spiritual perspectives or made any lasting impressions regarding my views on evangelism, but I can say it was probably the best thing on the radio when the single was released in 1992. At least until I discovered grunge.

Buffet O-kay

Listening to the Badlands album by Chris Staples. Delicious lo-to-mid-fi humdrumminess. It was released back in January of 2010, but I haven't listened to it until now. You can do so as well, streaming it at Bandcamp.


I've been to the badlands of South Dakota. It's like a giant wicked playground.
One day I'll go back and probably accidentally drop my wallet down one of those cavernous crevasses.


Watching the Jays and Yanks on the television.
The Jays were winning.
Then the Yanks were winning.
So far they're continuing to win.
Soon these games will count for something.

People who say baseball is boring don't know that Luis Salazar lost his effing EYEBALL last week. Next month he plans to resume his minor league managerial duties as if nothing happened. He'll probably wear a pirate patch. Hardcore.


The only Elizabeth Taylor movie I've ever watched cover-to-cover was Taming of the Shrew. She was silent, angry, and ever-glamorous (she couldn't hide it -- the character was not a glamorous one). But more than that she was an actress. Shakespearean, even.

I also appreciated her contributions to the Simpsons.

1932-2011

To celebrate the arrival of spring nature decided to drop heavy quantities of snow upon us. I almost made it to work and back without incident, but a few blocks from home I slid into the curb and jacked the wheel alignment. The car still operates, but to drive straight I'll have to steer to the right. Tomorrow's commute should be interesting.

Phil Phridays! -- Land of Confusion

God bless the Internet.

Adventures in Basilica-Making

I am currently reading "Basilica - The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's" by R.A. Scotti. It is, as you might expect, about the construction of St. Peter's Basilica.

I'm about halfway through right now. Here are my favorite parts so far:
[These are not spoilers, by the way. First of all, you're never going to read this book anyway, even though I do highly recommend it. Secondly, you can't spoil real life events that have actually happened. The Basilica gets built. You can go visit it. That's the ending.]

[Also, just to clarify, this is the Vatican St. Peter's. It's in Rome. The Pope waves his popey hand from its balcony. Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor gallivant around it in "Angels and Demons." Ewan's the bad guy. (Now THAT'S a spoiler.)]

First favorite part --
Pope Julias II wants a new St. Peter's. The old one is nice, but the Pope has big ideas and wants something grandiose in its place. So he hires Donato Bramante, a talented and respected architect, to oversee the project. Bramante starts wrecking the old St. Peter's... with little regard for anything. People get upset because A) the church is over 1,000 years old, B) the church is a beloved icon and people from miles around make pilgrimages to it, and C) Bramante is destroying the priceless works of art inside. Bramante holds off on destroying the other half of the building and begins construction on the new St. Peter's.

I am convinced this thought went through Bramante's head: "Perhaps people will be more understanding about demolishing the rest of the old church once they see how totally awesome the new one is." He was a bit of a cavalier.

Second favorite part --
While the Basilica was slowly being constructed, the Pope wanted other buildings on site to be touched up. Bramante brought in seven highly regarded painters to do some frescoes in the Pope's domicile. He also brought in a young twenty-five year-old unproven artist named Raphael. Each set to work on four different rooms, and when Bramante came back several months later to check on their progress he was astounded by the beauty of Raphael's work. He was so impressed that he immediately told the other artists to take off, Raphael was to do their rooms instead. As they were packing their stuff workers came in and started chipping their unfinished frescoes off the wall. All that time and energy reduced to colorful flakes on the floor. Those rooms in the Popes house, by the way, are now called the Stanze di Raffaello and are defining examples of High Renaissance art. Google it. You'll find some stuff you recognize.

Third favorite part --
The Pope wanted Michelangelo in on the project. Everybody knew Michelangelo was the best sculptor in Italy and his talents would be appreciated. Everybody also knew Michelangelo was hard to get along with. He was paranoid, intensely prideful, and had a short temper. Bramante also didn't want Michelangelo's work to outshine his own, so he told him to paint the center portion of a chapel ceiling. The ceiling was 70 feet high, Bramante's scaffolding was questionable, and, of course, there was the challenge of paining on a ceiling. Michelangelo, feeling that Bramante wanted him to fail at this near-impossible task, went to the Pope to protest. He argued that he was a sculptor, not a painter, and his talents would be better served elsewhere on site. The Pope wouldn't budge, so, surprisingly, Michelangelo offered to paint the entire ceiling for only double the price.

This is where Michelangelo is a mad genius.

He built his own scaffolding and set to work, working from dawn to dusk, ruining his body, teetering seven-stories up, getting paint in his eyes, committing his life to this one task. He refused to let anybody see his work until he was completely finished, not even the Pope. It took him four years to finish the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and upon its completion he had gloriously proved that you don't mess with Michelangelo.

"If Bramante thought that he was marginalizing Michelangelo by relegating him to the Sistina, the aerial act did not turn out exactly as he had hoped. Michelangelo dumbfounded his rivals and made their jealousy seem like petty malice. It was sweet revenge."

Each of these three incidents are completely hilarious to me, though they were never intended to be that way. I may need to work on de-evil-ing my sense of humor. But only after I finish this book.

Roadside Monument - "Egos the Size of Cathedrals"

The MP3.com Vault

Do you remember the golden days of MP3.com? Ten years ago it was a wonderful musical community where new music could be discovered, popular music could be enjoyed, and band members would respond if you said something nasty about them.

The biggest perk, of course, was the free downloads. It wasn't like the music webstores of today like Insound.com or the current MP3.com where a band's label provides the website with a couple of the band's songs (which are free to download but only if you can navigate the confusing site itself.) Instead the original MP3.com was well-organized and content was provided directly from the bands themselves. Additionally those musicians received some small revenue per download, a tactic still used today by websites like Last.fm.

Most bands were either on small labels or completely independent. Either way they were simply looking for exposure. (It should be noted that many larger well-known bands and artists utilized the site as well -- Alanis Morissette was an early supporter, and this is where I listened to Sunny Day Real Estate for the first time. But the popular were far outnumbered by the never-before-heard.) They were happy that somebody -- anybody -- was taking the time to listen to their music. I talked to some band members via the Internet, physically met others, purchased CDs from still others... all of this would have been impossible without the communal camaraderie fostered by MP3.com.

Unfortunately the site met with financial troubles (as they always do) and the owners had to sell the domain name. And while the current MP3.com is nice, the artists are untouchable and there is no sense of impending discovery.

I've lost a lot of those original downloads. Computers crap out, memory is erased, or sometimes things are accidentally deleted. Fortunately a lucky few files have survived the years and still reside on my hard drive. Furthermore, I had burned a CD a long time ago of things exclusively found on MP3.com. I still have that CD.

Remarkably I've retained enough of these rare tracks to start a short series. This is Part One of that series.

Hopefully this will either open your ears to music you would have never ever never listened to (because these songs are over ten years old and residing in some online graveyard) or you will be taken on an awkward trip down a nostalgic memory lane.


We will start with a band called 2540. In the late 90's/early 00's it was trendy for Christian bands to name themselves after Bible verses without explicitly revealing which Bible verse it was they named themselves after. I supposed it encouraged dialogue, and I can't argue with that.

Anyway, 2540 played melodic pop punk, which was also all the rage in those days. I didn't know much else about the band. I do remember one of the band members kept trying to IM me on Napster, but I would be at class or eating dinner at the dining hall. I do kind of wish we had become friends because a few years later 2540 would drastically change their style of music and rename themselves The Showdown.

I saw The Showdown perform once. The lead singer promised to kick the audience into a case of ashes.

Listen to the 2540 track first. It's peppy and catchy like high-school punk should be. Then watch The Showdown video. That is some serious rock 'n' roll evolution.

2540 - "Aftermath"

The Showdown - Achilles - The Backbreaker