You're
Wrong
An
Irregular Column
by
Mykel Board
"You can tell how
punk somebody is by how often they go to the post office.” --Kyle
Nooneman
“To see a world in a
grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms
of your hand and eternity in an hour.” --William Blake
Almost every month,
I complain about the internet. Perhaps, though, like Blake's grain of
sand, the world is contained somewhere in anything, even Facebook.
Right now, I'm reading the Facebook group Old School Hardcore
Kids. It starts me on
the path to this column. Let's look at what it says.
From one post to
another, when it's not YouTube videos of Agnostic Front, it's debate
about what's real hardcore. On Facebook and in this zine...
One month after the next... Letters columns and reviews... some
debate rages... if not hardcore... at least punk. What is it? Who is
it? And most importantly, who it is NOT? This column will settle
that.
First... as you
know from the myriad of editorials, letters to the editor, interview
comments... if you allow your song to be used on anything that has
corporate connections. IT'S NOT HARDCORE.
THE SCENE: Tom
Vomit is in a crisis. He's been offered a job as a designer in the
mega-evil ad agency, AD BOOSTERS. Tons of cash. The only problem: he
has to make an ad for Walmart, the most evil corp of corpAmerica. He
has one way out.
His band, the
Decolators, has a song that Toyota wants. If he sells the rights to
that song, he and his bandmates can live from the royalties. He won't
have to take a job whoring himself to the corporatocracy. He can live
from his music... his dream since he was a 14 year old punk rocker
listening to Green Day. Music or evil corporate hell? What does he
choose? He chooses music...and gets thrown out of the punkrock club
because of it.
Get it Tom? It
wouldn't matter if you got nothing from the song or if
it's a benefit to save French anarchist bombers from the guillotine.
If it's got a corporate logoTM on it, it ain't punk-- and
neither are you!
Of course, that
doesn't go far enough. No matter how macho, shirtless, ripped the
picture on the cover is, if the music is poppy, danceable (rather
than moshable), or if it makes you smile and not grit your teeth and
clench your fist. IT'S NOT HARDCORE!
THERE'S MORE: no
matter how nasty it sounds, if the musicians look like dorks... if
the singer has glasses... or the cover shows a bunch of cute guys in
Hawaiian shirts and porkpie hats... IT IS SOFT! IT IS NOT HARDCORE!
FLASHBACK. It's
1986: I'm in Bleecker Bob's... fishing through the cheap punk
bin. At the next milk crate is Fairly Mulligan, bass player for
the hardest band in New York: THE NEANDERTHALS. I pull a record from
the case and show it to him. It's from 1982, a band called The
Ancestors. I heard a lot about them, but never actually HEARD
them. On the cover is a drawing of a guy in glasses wearing a tie.
The name of the LP is FILO GOES FOR AN MBA. I show it to Fairly.
“Waddaya thinka
this?” I ask him. “I heard of 'em but I don't know 'em.”
Fairly looks at the
LP and just about spits.
“It's shit!” he
says. “You can't be HARDcore and wear glasses.... and a fuckin'
tie? Are you kidding? Somebody should kill that guy.”
I put the record
back.
Flash ahead to
1993: It's GG's notorious last show, at the Gas Station in New
York. Everybody knows about it. The chaos, the shit-slinging, the
fatal aftermath. But what everybody DOESN'T know is what happened
AFTER the show... at THE MARS BAR (RIP).
The scummiest bar
in New York. It somehow managed to last well into this century. I've
been there with Ivan Merma and Gilberto... post WTC.
In 1993, you took
your life... or at least your balls... in your hand when you went
into the place. Several of us refugees from the GG show go there to
have a few drinks to recover from what we saw.
I walk into the
bathroom. enter a stall, sit on the toilet and remove GG's shit from
my jacket. I use the corner of my wallet to scrape. Then I wrap each
stinky brown piece in a paper napkin. My plan is to sell the wrapped
GG shit for $5... in front of CBs at the next hardcore matinee.
As I scrape, the
door thumps. At first, I think someone's knocking to get in, but the
door doesn't lock... just open it and come on in. Then there are more
thumps, on the door... outside... everywhere. Only one thing sounds
like breaking wood. That is breaking wood. I hear that
sound. I also hear some groans... some “motherfucker!”
Gunshots do not come, but they wouldn't surprise me.
A lull in the
smashing, bashing, breaking, crashing, tumbling... I push the door
open... slightly... The bar looks like the aftermath of a mafia hit.
The back mirror is shattered... shards hang at odd angles... most of
it on the floor and bartop. Not one stool is vertical... few are in
one piece. On the floor, from my vantage point, I see the leather
clad arm of someone whose body I can't see... the hand holds a
half-shattered bottle of Olde English 800. Blood puddles on the floor
under that hand.
I stick my head out
a littler further. There on the bartop, in a grey hooded sweatshirt,
unzipped, is K Rappo, singer for one of the hardest bands in NY:
YOUNG PEOPLE NOW.
“Them walls are
broke down, huh?” he says when he sees me crawling out of the
bathroom.
“Waddaya mean?”
I ask.
“GG ain't so
tough,” he answers. “He says DRINK, FIGHT, AND FUCK? Hah, he's
got it wrong. Hardcore is not about drinking or fucking. It's THE
FIGHT. Listen, Mykel, get this straight. YOU ARE NOT HARDCORE IF YOU
DON'T FIGHT.”
FLASH AHEAD A
WEEK: THE NEADERTHALS are playing A7. They've broken up and
gotten back together more times than a Hollywood couple. Great show,
but that's not the important point. AFTER the show, I see Fairly
Mulligan in the corner, breathing hard... showing off his chest. He
spots me and waves.
“Hey Mykel,” he
says. “I got something for you.”
Grabbing
my hand, he pulls me into the A7 bathroom.
Now,
I've been thirsting for his glutei maximi since I first saw him as a
drummer for The Motivaters in 1980. Is he finally going to give up
that anal hymen? My hopes rise like my penis when he pushes open a
stall door. But then something strange happens.
Instead of dropping
trou and bending over, he pushes on the back wall of the stall. It
moves and we enter a secret room.
It's
dark. Before my eyes adjust I see nothing. A sound comes through the
blackness... like a muffled pigeon chirp... or the struggling screams
of someone whose mouth is duct-taped shut. Bingo!
As
my eyes adjust, I make out a platform in the middle of the dark room.
Tied down to that platform-- a limb stretched toward each corner-- is
what looks like a naked white boy wearing black-rimmed glasses. It IS
a naked white boy wearing black-rimmed glasses. It's Filo Zuckerman,
singer from The Ancestors.
“See
him?” asks Fairly... as if I could miss him. “He thinks he's
hardcore. No tattoos and the songs? Titles like You're the
One, and Silly Girl.
Nothing about UNITY or THE CREW or AMERICA. Just love songs... and he
calls himself hardcore?”
Something glints in
Fairly's hand. I just see a faint flash before I realize that it's a
pocket switchblade now plunged into the chest of the boy on the
platform. It must have hit a vein, because blood spurts like a
geyser... covering Fairly's face and chest.
Stabbing is not
enough. Fairly slices downward and then flings the knife aside. With
both hands he reaches into the slit and pulls out Filo's still
beating heart. I can barely keep from fainting at the gore. Fairly
leans over the pulsating cardiac, I watch him take a deep bite. It
seems to explode as the blood-engorged organ spews red everywhere.
Chewing, then
swallowing, Fairly looks at me. His face covered in blood like a
kid's face... covered in blueberries after a pie-eating contest,
Fairly looks at me and smiles.
“Mykel,” he
says. “You're not HARDCORE until you've eaten human flesh.”
ENDNOTES:
[email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com)
or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/)
will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column]
-->Apology
dept: I don't answer letters in the letter section. That section
belongs to the readers. I have this column. It's not fair if I have
the last word both places. Here, I want to answer a letter and to
apologize for an error. I quoted Ron Paul on Muammar
Qhaddaffi. Though the quote was from the Ron Paul website, Ron did
not actually write it. I missed that. Still, written by RP or not,
the quote is correct in its analysis of why that great Libyan was
killed.
-->Oh
that again dept:
Another letter was about my column comparing a coach's sex with some
kids to Apple/Steve Job's exploitation of thousands of Chinese
workers, including several who committed suicides because they
couldn't take the pressure. I asked why the former got all the press
and attention while the latter was clearly more evil.
The
MRR letter ONLY attacked my “belief that
there is nothing wrong with a 50 year old man having sex with an 10
year old boy.”
It made no mention of the Apple-caused deaths. I guess it proved my
point.
-->It's not as
bad as you thought dept: This Week Magazine reports that the
break of the “housing bubble” is not what it seems. While homes
valued under $1 million have fallen an average of 1.5 percent in
value over the last year, fear not. Homes valued over
$1 million dollars have risen 0.7 percent in the same time.
Says real estate
economist Stan Humphries, “Luxury is the best-performing segment of
the housing market right now.”
-->But they
can watch us dept: The Freeman
website reports
that: In at least three states (Illinois, Massachusetts, and
Maryland), it is now illegal to record an on-duty police officer even
if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense,
and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation
of privacy exists.
The
legal justification for arresting the “shooter” rests on existing
wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing
law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and
Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent
for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is
obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not
consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent
states also include an exception for recording in public places where
“no expectation of privacy exists” (Illinois does not.) In
practice this exception is not being recognized.
-->Anarchy in
Bloomingdales dept: Anarchist News Dot Org reports
that the Axe perfume company is making a new fragrance. You guessed
it Anarchy Perfume. (Does it smell like tear gas?) One of the
commercials for it is: A female police officer chases a masked
jewelry thief through a sun-drenched cityscape. Sprinting, he pulls
off his mask, sheds his jacket and dumps his bag of loot; she throws
off her police hat, undoes her utility belt and drops her weapons to
the ground. She’s no longer a cop; he’s no longer a criminal.
They stare at each other with unbridled desire. The words “Nothing
will ever be the same again” appear on the screen, followed by the
warning “Anarchy is coming.”
Can
Eau d'Punk be
far behind?
-->
If it takes the blood of one Christian boy to make 40
matzohs, how many matzos can you make from 143 Christian boys dept:
Kyle Nooneman, whose quote starts this column, sent me this from the
Huffington
Post:
Parents
of students at Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, Ga., are
outraged at the school district's using examples of slavery in math
word problems, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
The
word problems in question include references to slavery and
"beatings."
Here
are some examples:
"Each
tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how many
would each slave pick?" and
"If
Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1
week?"
-->I
wish he were right dept: New
Jersey Governor Chris Christie attacked President Obama as
encouraging a nation that “places comfortable lies ahead of
difficult truths” and a person who is trying to “divide the
country by demonizing the wealthy.” If only it were true! The
wealthy ARE demons. Much more than Muslims or non-working people or
old people that the Republicans are trying to demonize. Obama,
unfortunately, could never be so good as to demonize the right
people.
-->That's
so ghetto dept: Kyle also sent
me this one about Microsoft. They makes this mapping app
to keep drivers out of dangerous neighborhoods.
In modern American cities, this means places where there are a lot of
Negroes or Hispanics.
Since most urban
crime is between people who know each other and not random drivers,
one critic of the app suggests:
A
more useful app would be for young black men to be able to map blocks
with the highest risks of their being pulled over or stopped on the
street by police," he said. "That phenomenon affects many
more people than the rare occurrences of random violence against
motorists driving through 'bad' neighborhoods."
I
say, yeah, but the guys being pulled over by the cops usually can't
afford iPhones to use the app on... unless they steal them.
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