Archive for the ‘Reviews & Commentaries’ Category

They Might Call In The National Guard On Your Ass

Tuesday, November 14th, 2023

I watched Punishment Park a few days ago. A cinema vérité pseudodocumentary from 1971(!), it takes place in an alternate United States where hippies, Commie sympathizers, and anti-war protestors who don’t want fifteen to twenty years in prison are shipped off to Punishment Park, where they have three days to run fifty three miles through the desert to an American flag. If they reach it in time, they get to walk free, or so they are told.

It’s a gritty, chilling, masterfully put together work of alternative history and it’s also kind of a misery fest. The absurdity of the concept leaves room for some degree of reaction to the extremity of it, and maybe in a different context I would be able to crack a smile at lanky seventies youths running towards nothing with awful posture through a desert in record-breaking heat. But you have to understand that I have been put through the ringer of having regurgitated radical politik parroted at me over and over and over. It gives certain people a thrill to wallow in that misery. But it just doesn’t thrill me to have people try to insert a microchip in my head repeating slogans of Everything is Awful and Will Never Get Better.

You would think I would relate to one of the girls who gets interrogated at the Punishment Park, who is blonde, 19, and writes (kind of awful) songs about the Pigs and Tricky Dick and all that. She talks about how she dropped out of college because after the Kent State massacre, she realized that it wouldn’t matter if she wore a stars-and-stripes cheerleader uniform and rah-rahed America all day; even if she was just a spectator, the National Guard would just shoot her anyway. She didn’t feel safe being out in the open.

This allure of the “underground” was in full swing during that era of the Weathermen and is even more common today where we long for a time when the revolution wasn’t televised. It seems people love this movie because of these tendencies. When your face is in the light, it’s scary. You retreat to the womb, or in this case the commune, and you feel safer but you also isolate yourself. You surround yourself with hardcore ideals that present plain fact but with no room for changing those facts substantially. You preach upheaval but get so caught up in the concept of it that you mentally can’t go about ever making it happen, because doing so would make you like the world better, and you can’t have that when you live off of the world being against you. It’s addicting. We need the truth, especially now, but we’re all individuals with our own individual lived experiences. The real world isn’t a colorless, lifeless desert plateau. There’s color and water and food and little creatures crawling in the ground.

Different strokes for different folks, but why did Ken Russell have to die before he could direct a hilarious and extremely Ken Russell remake or take of this? These are the thoughts that go through my bored, weird, college girl head.

Hard Living

Saturday, September 9th, 2023

Pussy Gillette are hands down one of the best recent groups in existence. And to think frontwoman Masani didn’t first pick up a bass until her thirties and all of their music videos—favorably—look like a straight rip from a thrice-copied VHS tape you would get your grubby hands on from a cool skater buddy in either 1988 or 1998. They are as real and raw as it gets, yet the video of theirs linked above, which just came out a few days ago, has just 312 views at the time of me writing this.

A message of defiant empowerment that pairs big-smile badassery with a great and much needed sense of humor, buried against the tides of internet business as usual. I don’t think people are quite ready for Pussy Gillette. They may be “recent”, but they bring with them a heady aspiration for longevity that might alienate the general public. The general public is not concerned with artists with guts, just artists with all-caps GUTS. Of course, I speak of America’s prodigal girlchild, Olivia Rodrigo, who I cannot believe I am mentioning in the same breath as Pussy Gillette. But I have to.

I voluntarily keep up with Olivia’s music as a checking tool since she’s just one year older than me yet completely the opposite of me in numerous ways. Here’s the thing: when I write songs and make music, I hope to make a—for lack of a better term—ack—safe space for young female artists who prefer not to listen to Taylor Swift. Olivia’s music intends to make a hostile space for young female artists who prefer not to listen to Taylor Swift. You see the problem here? We are not very compatible. I will give her most recent video credit for not being a genreless slice of slap-in-the-face curd pie like some of her others—c’mon, it’s kyuuuuute.

Olivia is twenty, a baby in the grand scheme of things. Not too long ago she was nineteen, my age. I can attest to the pain and suffering that comes with being a teenage girl, as well as the satisfaction that can come from squishing and pouring those swirling emotions into song (or prose). The truth is is that I am just not as social as Olivia—no wonder she uses the butterfly throughout her branding. I don’t really have songs to write about regarding Tyler from history class. I have songs to write about mass media brainwashing’s effect on the populace and that scene from The Wall where Bob Geldof is yelling at everyone (which is probably the most accurate depiction of the modern day large scale concert production, by the way). Maybe if that Tyler kid said something that really fascinated/infuriated/both of those things-me I would wring it like a towel and turn the warped, pulsating droplets into a song. But my brain is too skewered and too focused on my studies to do the whole “normal teenage girl” thing that much.

Or maybe that’s just the “commercially palatable” thing. Olivia’s GUTS are that she is smooth, like intestines in a well-oiled Cuckoo’s Nest Combine machine. Our friends Pussy Gillette, however, are rough, jagged, and edgy in a way that is all their own. And boy, do they own it. Yet they are not willy nilly—they share the same focus, awareness, and intelligence that societally powerful artists have, though PG choose cute shock value over cute exploitation of the vulnerable masses. In this I actually see a chance of engagement with a wider, captive audience—they embody defiance and self-assured-ness in a world that needs it. “Permanent Trash” is an ode to self empowerment and self pride. These traits are of great yet controversial interest and analysis to our society. Because of the internet, the self esteem of humanity sits in a perilous state in an age of simultaneous constant comparison to and instant disappointment in other people. We are forced to ask ourselves what traits we can find pride in without alienating others, springing gray hairs like poison darts as we ruminate on how we could be “better”.

Never mind that the people pitting us against each other in this manner are so comfortable in their positions of corrupt power that they never even consider these concerns. They know they are bad, and they know they have their fingers on society’s pulse. The “influencers” we worship and revile in unison, the milquetoast kings and queens of the schoolyard, guide us towards superficial quests for brownie points that only serve to obscure that they are the real enemy. In a desperate bid for commercial acceptance, humanity cries out, “what part of me is palatable?” Pussy Gillette offer the answer: the whole she-bang, baby. Live with yourself. Live.

But, of course, by the time you’re on the “G” in their name when typing it into the YouTube search bar, the suggested results snap away out of fear of Pussy Gallavanting, Pussy Galloping, Pussy Grumbling, or any sort of adorable videos of tiny felines doing cute things, therefore obstructing the culture of cat videos that has been the foundation of the internet since its earliest days.

But all of the best recent bands—PG, cumgirl8, Round Eye, as I was writing this Spotify recommended me a band called DICKFARTBUTTSEX—have eyebrow raising names. I say we usher in a new culture of degeneracy and dignity with the music we listen to. You can’t truly spill guts without a little seppuku.

P.S.: A side note from the Tumblr side of things: this new wave of porn bots is too good. “ReformedBlasphemy” should be MY username.

Riot Grrrl Shizz?

Monday, July 24th, 2023

Saw Le Tigre last week and have been procrastinating on posting about it. T’was fun, though I was at my peak of liking their music and Kathleen Hanna in general in high school, so I guess I was going in with more jaded eyes. Case in point: in between songs at one point she was talking about making “spaces” “safer” for non-”straight, white, cis” people. Which…kind of bummed me out for a few songs. Just a few weeks prior I’d been to a show in my town where one of the openers was a bunch of local kids, the oldest of which had just graduated high school. 3/5 of the members were girls, one of them sporting a super sick afro. The pit was all female at one point (and much more existent than crowd action at the Le Tigre show, where everyone danced tamely in place until they ended the night with “Deceptacon” and spontaneously everyone started mauling each other). But the main takeaway that I got from those kids’ show wasn’t some message of “inclusion”. My takeaway was that they kicked ass. Their music wasn’t sanitized; in fact, it was actually pretty vicious. And they didn’t ask permission from anyone to do what they did. They didn’t read some book that told them how to do it, either. They were playing because it was something they loved to do, and it was their passion towards kicking ass that defined them. It would be a disgrace to that passion to try and apply tokenism to them or that night. I thought it was cool seeing a lot of fellow young women in the crowd, but I also thought it was cool that, finally, my little town has a cool little ~space~ where all kinds of people can indulge in some Maximum Volume Kick Ass Rock-N-Roll. I wasn’t consciously scanning the crowd to see how many people looked like me or didn’t. I didn’t give a shit, because I was living in the moment. Concerts are events where all different kinds of people can become one with great music. And in that moment, when you’re losing yourself in guitar feedback and physical interaction, “female representation” and “visible queerness” don’t really matter. What the hell constitutes being “visibly queer”, anyways? Certain patches or pins? Certain styles of hair? Certain facial structures? Why can’t people just be people?

Maybe I would’ve been a little more impressed if I had less life experience and more of a grudge against the concept of men. And this is coming from a physically small female from the suburbs. If anyone should have a grudge against men, shouldn’t it be me? Too bad I try not to judge people based on features they can’t really change. I just judge them on whether their taste in music is good or not. Because the superficial construct doesn’t matter much. It’s the gray matter that matters.

Kathleen ended her spiel by saying we should consider solution-based approaches to the problems in our world. Which is totally correct. But she seemed unaware that the solution is already unfolding in gritty little scenes across the country. Hence why I was…a little bummed.

A Roundtable Discussion on Heavy Metal (and Melanie)

Thursday, April 6th, 2023

A few days ago, my boyfriend sent me a link to Lil Pump’s recent smash hit “Pump Rock x Heavy Metal” saying, and I quote, “DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS.” But it’s hard to not forcefully contaminate myself to music that is atrocious to make the good music all the more worthwhile. That’s how dedicated I am to my love of music.

Besides, I was meaning to explore this on my own anyways after hearing Lil Pump’s glorious, glorious weird scream-grunt noise on an Instagram story. Let’s review whether or not Mr. Gucci Gang is able to elevate two of rock’s most iconic subgenres to the modern age.

“Bob” help us.

The intro is, fittingly, the most stereotypical take on punk rock possible, and is probably most similar to what disconnected old farts think all punk rock sounds like. Mediocre Generica was the title of a (much more sonically interesting, if guilty pleasurable) Leftöver Crack album, and it fits here. Upon further reserach, last.fm tagged this song as rock, metal, nu metal, rap metal, drone metal avant-garde, beatdown hardcore, AND crossover thrash, so maybe my aural analysis is subpar. Maybe all this time I was actually the musical equivalent of one of those people who gets repulsed by eating anything better than McDonald’s and I had no idea. If so, I feel ashamed.

In this striking vein, I’ll give the rest of the song some credit: the production is actually interesting! Sonically, it’s more interesting and attention-grabbing than a lot of the more recent music I’ve heard, with an intense throbbing bass line that I particularly like. Too bad it’s got Lil Pump singing over it. I love having to hear scrawny men with awful hair sing about emo bitches and having a dagger dick, which is extremely disturbing. He calls himself a narcissist in this song, which makes sense with how self-indulgent and oblivious to common sense the lyrics are. As a complete outsider to the whole “emo rap” or whatever scene, I’m kind of fascinated by the repeated motif of wrist-slitting throughout the song – if this song is declaring itself “heavy metal,” does this mean that all those sensational news reports from the eighties about how those poor teens were beckoned to kill themselves because a Judas Priest song told them to, were actually true? It’s hard to overlook lyrical content when someone has such an awful voice.

This song seems to have been created for people who enjoy the concept of punk rock and heavy metal, but don’t have much knowledge in anything beyond the sloganeering and looking like you have street cred. I doubt Lil Pump has much knowledge past that regard either, or has any interest in going beyond it in his music.

I had been meaning to write this post for a short while, but I kept getting busy. But yesterday morning, the Instagram algorithm similarly offered me another current music faux pas that my masochistic brain just had to subject myself to, and I just had to get something about it out there. This time, it was a paragraph Melanie Martinez had written explaining one of the songs on her new album, because her fans are apparently too dumb to be able to come to their own conclusions about the meaning of her songs. She says:

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This is obviously the best thing to be reading while you’re preparing breakfast. Funnily enough, Lil Pump also alludes to period sex in his previously mentioned song.

I read the lyrics, which I refuse to link because they’re stupid, and I listened to as much of the song I could stand, which wasn’t very much. It sucked. You know when you only read the lyrics to a song and you come up with your own musical accompaniment in your head? I knew it wasn’t going to be as good as my brain’s assumptions, but I was stunned. You would think that an artist who is supposedly going through some radical image change would make music that similarly pushes boundaries, not just something created solely to be covered on a ukulele. It was one of the most mild mannered, unoffensive sounding songs I’d ever heard.

As for the lyrical content, it is sad to me how Melanie could not even come up with a basic metaphor to convey her idea. Like Little Pumperton, who uses the usual guns-and-cars flexing to communicate masculine hood prowess, Mel resorts to the most basic, blatant concepts to get across her point of being…a woman who exists and does things, I guess. As a cisgender young female, I technically should be on this song’s side, but it only comes off as condescending. I don’t need something that is completely natural and familiar to me explained to me in such, er, explicit terms. (“Womb shedding.” Gag.)

If I’m somewhere near the target audience for Melanie’s music in terms of my age and sex, then I’d say we deserve better. Young women can think for themselves and don’t need to be spoon-fed a fourteen year old’s concept of lyrical depth in order to feel “empowered.” Neither do young men need watered down portrayals of material wealth, hoe-wrangling, and glorified self harm. In today’s world, everyone fears being misunderstood. But the answer to that should not be undermining people’s intelligence and spoon-feeding them lowest common denominator nonsense. People should be allowed to bring their own interpretations to the songs they listen to and not have everything spelled out to them. Nuance and complexity are good things, and they should be present in what we see, read, and listen to. We should be encouraged to think critically about what we consume.

If we don’t, then…well, I guess we let songs like these take the world by storm.

Jimmy Bell’s Still In Town

Monday, February 20th, 2023

I type to you from the comfort of my brand new dorm room. I’ll get into the real nitty gritty of why exactly I had to switch rooms when it’s further behind me, but I’m glad to be here. I moved in on Saturday, which involved three trips across the Stopher-Johnson bridge and resulted in veg-out levels of exhaustion. It was a worthwhile exhaustion nonetheless.

Instead of a house warming party, I did what I often do on weekend nights and indulged in music written by old men. But instead of expressing my wackjob musical taste in headphone-induced isolation, I did it in a room of other people. 15-60-75, The Numbers Band, have been playing the area for fifty three years, and this was the first time they played in Kent after I got here where I wasn’t gallivanting home on break. Besides, it was at the Kent Stage, which I’ve never been to, and it’s a much more relevant-to-me first show there than, say, Ace Frehley or Crash Test Dummies.

Knowing the Numbers’ first album, I was well aware of the group’s sound – an angsty and passionate strain of the blues-meets-jazz-meets something else entirely, with the right lick of dissonance that pinpoints their origin smack dab in the middle of the Rust Belt. There isn’t much to do in Akron, so I guess the primary solution is to make music or do drugs (or both). It’s so Pere Ubu, so “Navvy” at times, how it leaps and squelches and swells up in a big ball of noise assaulting your frail ears. I know there’s some interview where David Thomas is like, “Jimmy Bell is the ONLY GOOD SOUNDING ALBUM EVER RECORDED.” Which is a large overstatement, but it is a really good sounding album.

Their live sound reflects that to this day. The noise was crisp and loud. Every member was talented and tight. It was pretty damn stunning. Bob Kidney is a great band leader, and a hilarious one at that. Lots of great banter. A few guests came up for songs peppered throughout the night, like Chris Butler of the Waitresses and Tin Huey (seen wielding possibly the coolest bass I’ve seen since the Steinberger below)! Everyone sitting around me was older, and the woman beside me was asking me how the heck I knew who they were. (She was impressed.) Lots of name drops in the fragments of conversations that poked my head during intermission. It felt like a good ol’ time, one of many, with lots of invisible lines darting across the room like yarn strings on a bulletin board. Aside from being the youngest person in the room, I might’ve been the only person in the room who was seeing the Numbers for the first time.

It’s surreal acknowledging that there’s been this tiny scene here that’s been happening since practically the sixties but has not expanded far past its zip code, resulting in all the cool old people from back in the day being connected to everybody else and living within an approximate 50 mile radius of each other. It’s kind of fascinating, honestly, being in a vortex so rooted in its geography and persistent obscurity. My perspective as a current student definitely helps feed some fascination in it for me. In my cultural anthropology class, we’ve discussed the processes of field work – participant observation, cultural relativism, historical particularism. In Music as a World Phenomenon, I’ve read many mentions of the contributions of ethnomusicologists documenting music traditions across the globe. Does the shadow of the Goodyear Blimp fall differently than that of the steel sky birds worshiped by some remote island communities? Are all those “Punk 45” compilations less important than the “world music” CDs that hipster David Byrne fans buy to prove that they’re not only into African sounds when white guys do them? It really does feel like I’ve encountered some hidden anomaly that has somehow withstood JB’s becoming shit-kickin’ country/get crunk Brewhouse, gentrification, and things getting caught on fire. In a documentary we were shown in anthropology class, a group of linguistic historians arrived at a remote ex-Soviet village to document its language and were told, if only you’d come five years earlier, because many of that language’s most versatile speakers had died off. It’s like I’ve ended up mingling among the last great hurrah of a cultural phenom microcosm by complete accident; maybe I could’ve come at a time when the esplanade didn’t exist, but I’m here anyways with mental pen and paper. And I’m the only person of my generation who gives a crap. I’m one of the only people who gives a crap at all, really. But I guess it’s worthwhile that there’s somebody that gives a crap.

Nevertheless, 15-60-75 continue to chug away with great vigor, tucked away safe from the spotlights of the nebulous festering “classic rock” stadium blob. I do kind of love how you can see Terry Hynde, Chrissie’s brother, be extremely awesome on the saxophone for twenty dollars plus ticket fee, though. In 2023, can you beat that?

Okay, back to listening to “High Heels Are Dangerous” on repeat.

What A Fantastic Movie I’m In

Wednesday, January 18th, 2023

Someone on last.fm changed the album photo for Simply Saucer’s superb Cyborgs Revisited compilation from the good ol’ fashioned monochrome photo I’m used to to the original cover, the same photo soaked in searing psychedelic YMCK acid. It’s common for black and white photos to be everywhere on last.fm, and I do enjoy the combined old school-and-concise ethos of that mission, but I also appreciate the WHOA TRIPPEN OUT WOOOOOOAH effect of this shakeup.

I’ve been feeling the psych quite a bit these past days, to be truthful. Barbarella has been on my brain something fierce. As I get back to navigatrixing the trials and tribulations of Planet College, I guess I feel myself a tiny bit of its titular heroine, albeit less dumb (let’s be frank, she was pretty dumb) and more post-Babs Jane Fonda mugshot. At least, that’s what I’m trying to convey for myself. This is the semester I start going all in with the May 4 commemoration, after all, so I’ve got to get into that FTA ‘tude somehow. (Jane was scheduled to speak at the fiftieth back in 2020, but we all know how that went. NEAT.)

There’s a Barbarella remake in the works, apparently, which I only learned of fairly recently even though it was announced months ago. They’ve been trying for one since I think the nineties with actresses such as Drew Barrymore, and each try has ended in a quiet whimper of an abortion. This makes sense considering that Barbarella is a movie that could have only been made in 1968. How to you expect a modern audience to react to certain parts of that movie? Fittingly, there’s a plot summary for an early 2000s attempt (which of course I can’t find again for the life of me), and it sounds absolutely nothing like the original. Interesting if put in the right hands, but not faithful to the source material. Maybe it’s closer to the source material’s source material, which I am not yet familiar with. (Thanks to Mahvel’s subliminal effects on pop culture at large, I always forget that Barbarella is a comic book movie.)

That terminated remake seemed to take a more overtly political bent than the original, with lots of societal inequality and having your innocent past shattered before your eyes and the like. The original is also political, but in a super subtle way that is, obviously, drenched in copious amounts of sex. It is so sexy, in fact, that all anyone talks about regarding it is whether or not it is sexist. There’s surely a lens other than the feminist one that people can take about this movie* (while still recognizing Jane Fonda’s eternally radiating wonderfulness), and it doesn’t have to be an extremely serious one. Our world is more absurd, technologically advanced, and, frankly, stupid than ever, just like a Barbarella adventure. And what do we do? We refuse the laugh. It’s insane. And if you don’t recognize the insanity you can’t sustainably live.

2023! Less knee-jerk puritanical reactions, more embracing and exploring the trappings of liberation and all its hidden ugly corners, the pure intertwining with the reprehensible in perfect yin-yang union. If that remake actually happens, it is going to be awful.

* And I consider myself a feminist!

DEVOtion, Day Two

Tuesday, September 27th, 2022

And then the nerds re-congregated, and DEVOtional Saturday happened.

And what a de-evolved time it was.

The Jimmy Psycho Experiment, who have been DEVOtional openers for a few years now, set a relaxed mood well with their tiki-loungey versions of everyone’s favorite DEVO hits. Attention soon shifted towards the many special guests, whose Q&A sessions took up a good chunk of the night. Good old Mark was back for round 2, though he was slightly more subdued when compared to his misdemeanor on Friday. DEVOtional old timer Jerry Casale, who almost always comes out to support the fans, brought with him the music video premier of his next single, “The Invisible Man.” Without spoiling too much for everyone who wasn’t there, it was hands-down one of the most amusing things I’ve ever witnessed, and it only makes me more fascinated about what exactly goes on within Jerry’s mind that could make him conjure up something so perfectly, undeniably wack. But you’ll all see it in a few months.

Steve Bartek, the guitarist on Jerry’s recent music who is best known for his work with Oingo Boingo, joined Jerry in looking very smart and answering questions. I didn’t get to talk with him at all, but he seemed like a really genuine guy. The dark horse of the program, however, was one Michael Schwartz, better known as Rod Rooter, DEVO’s evil manager from way back. Throughout the night, Mike seamlessly incorporated his character into his talk-talk to the point where I initially genuinely wasn’t sure if he was joking or not when he discussed being the first white guy on King Records with a song produced by James Brown. (Spoiler alert: he WASN’T).

Sometime before DEVOtional started, Max had the brilliant idea of making Rod an entire election campaign which proceeded to snowball from a joke to people on Facebook actually buying made-to-order polo shirts emblazoned with the phrase “America’s Begging For The Barrel Room.” The virus had spread so far that Max didn’t even have to give Mark one of the campaign buttons he was handing out; he had already been given one by someone else. With Mike’s charisma and wit, I wouldn’t hesitate to vote in his favor, and I can’t help but hope he becomes a mainstay. (“The Man” did approve of Max’s effort, by the way.)

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Max signed one of his posters for him while I stood by, causing him to ask Max in character, “Is THIS your GIRLFRIEND?” Max would go on to be very fixated on the fact that Mike was a few hours early to the punch on that.

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Jerry, Mark, and the rest were signing items for hours. I heard someone say their autograph session clocked in at over three hours, which blows my mind and makes me want to pray atheist style for their dominant wrists. Max used the opportunity to gift Mark and Jerry bags containing some of his original music and hand decorated lab coats, with airbrush art for Marky and colorful tampons for Jer-Jer, while I stood by as photojournalist and emotional support.

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(Jerry sadly didn’t try it on for us in person, but the photo he uploaded later more than makes up for that.)

I wasn’t immune to the photo opportunities, either.

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All the while, Al Mothersbaugh’s band, Massive Hotdog Recall, brought the party as usual, proving that “Shout” can be a good song if you add some non-synthetic, whip-spankin’ horns to it. New Devolution, an energetic tribute band who came all the way from Chile to perform, followed by plowing through high-power early 80s DEVO tracks. The fun factor was through the roof as the spontaneously generated giant helium balls the crowd was serving around threatened to make a dent in it.

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After the raffle, which I did not win anything at, the highly anticipated Fight Milk, who were not balls, took the stage. They exemplified the fun factor just like last year, but having more than one guy on the stage again (while retaining last year’s cardboard cutouts) totally elevated their energy. Alongside Jackson, the band’s creative mastermind and sole constant, it was great having Tavi from Finland back onstage, whether he was flashing a creepy smile at the audience with down pitched vocals or scurrying around the stage wrecking his guitar strings. Those boys be DEVO.

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Max was also making his live performance debut, and he absolutely killed it. Not many other DEVOtional performances would both perform a song that hadn’t been performed since 1974 and make the live debut of Jerry’s latest single. (TAKE THAT, OLD MAN! Just kiddin’.) Max took lead on both, and it was so great seeing him in his element. It truly wouldn’t have been the same without him up there in that goddamn tampon coat hurling his Rod Rooter buttons at the crowd. I even caught a photo of one in mid air! I love blinding everyone with the flash from my camera.

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Detention finished off the night, though I sadly didn’t get to see most of their set because, deja vu, I was too busy having a conversation in the Ballroom’s bar the room over. (I got to hear their Steve-tribute cover of Oingo Boingo’s “Little Girls” in muffled format, though!) At least I did get to chat with their singer Elliott, who I’ve bumped into a few times on the Kent campus, beforehand. Us Kent chicks gotta stick together.

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And then, just like that, the night had winded down. Everyone packed up, stumbled out of the ballroom, and hit up Ubers back to their hotels. And then it was over.

Did it beat last year’s for me? No. That year was too special! But I’ll gladly let it be the first loser.

And hey, I got a boyfriend out of this one, so I guess that’s a plus.

DEVOtion, Day One

Sunday, September 25th, 2022

DEVOTIONAL. I called it “a bunch of nerds in a room” last year, and I stand by my previous classification of this excruciatingly nerdy event. Keep it wack, Cleveland.

But indulging in nerdy activities also allows one to see some impressive musical acts, engage in fascinating conversation, and see friends old and new that you’ve been waiting the whole year to get all in their faces calling them what they are: “NERRRRDS.” In short, it’s one of the most weekends of the year.

Fridays at DEVOtional are usually held in the tavern of the Beachland Ballroom, yet so many tickets sold this year that they had to move it to the main room. It was truly surreal. Yet it worked like a charm, and if anything, it just extends the excitement of Saturday, so if it’s what we gotta do to get all those nerds in that goddamn room, I’m good with it.

A good pal of mine, Malcolm Tent, truly opened this year’s installation with a set of “unwanted DEVO songs.” He’d been advertising it on Facebook for at least a week leading up to the event, and it definitely lived up to the hype. While I expected an acoustic set from the times he’s previously played DEVOtional, he instead unleashed a slew of mind-crushing electronic loops straight out of the rubber factory as he gestured the lyrics to “I Desire” like twisted spoken word. David Kendrick, who drummed for DEVO, frankly obliterated the skins for the last half of the set as Malcolm shredded his yowling electric guitar with a loose drumstick. It was beautiful, and dare I say it was the best set of the weekend. But we’ll get to Fight Milk in a bit.

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Malcolm was also the one who recruited me to create the art for the back of an album exclusive to this DEVOtional, DEVOted. It’s an intentionally bootleggy compilation of live tracks from past years, and it’s pretty damn DEVO all around. I’m proud of how my back cover turned out, and I’m glad I was able to lend a hand.

The BIG news was this year’s most esteemed first-time attendee, Mark Mothersbaugh himself. I remember the state of disbelief I was in when I saw his name on the DEVOtional flyer when it was first made public. Just about everyone who has ever gone to a DEVOtional had been going back and forth about Mark’s not being there for years, and he finally decided to give it a shot. There he was on Friday night, taking videos of bands on his phone and excitedly talking with his loyal followers. When I reminded him that I fake-punched him in New York last May by waving my fist at him, he took my wrist and yanked it at his chin and made me actually sock him. I could actually feel it in my fingers for a few minutes afterwards. During one of the bands I looked across the room and saw him take a giant bite out of the sleeve someone’s copy of oh, no! it’s DEVO. After the weekend was over I got to see photos on Facebook of him with other people’s phones in his mouth. He. Got. CRUUUUUNK. And it was glorious.

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Max got to nerd out to him about Mark’s brother Jim’s old school electronic drum kit from the seventies, and Mark filmed him doing it, so that footage exists on Mark’s phone. Ah, technology.

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Very serious.

The Akronauts, who mixed energetic DEVO covers with originals, followed Malcolm. They brought the fun and the funky basslines. Poopy Necroponde, who turned my brain inside out last year, followed, though this year they probably got closer to blowing my ears out! I’m glad my ears got the break they deserved after this weekend, especially from Morgan PC’s hardcore de-vo squelches and voiceboxes! Both bands really bought the fashion, with white jumpsuits and neon blue berets respectively. The latter’s bass player remains one of the coolest women in existence with her stage presence alone.

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I completely missed Weird Paul Petroskey’s closing set, which I’d been highly anticipating, because I was too busy having a conversation with an old school University of Akron alum outside, so I bought some of Paul’s CDs to make up for it. That was a reoccurring theme of the weekend: missing things because I was too busy being engaged in gripping talk with cool elders.

For such a shakeup, it ran smoothly as ever. Every act was energized to the max, and there was really was plenty of great conversation to have, whether it was with old friends, new friends, or Mark Mothersbaugh hopped up on Bloody Marys. It was a pretty damn great prelude to the jam packed Saturday that followed.

Also, look at how cute we are!

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Kent Let It Go

Sunday, September 25th, 2022

In the past week, I became the subject of numerous jokes about how I was going to need four blog entries for that past weekend alone—it later multiplied to six—because of all the events that got jam-packed into three and a half weary, weary days. Three days that contained my personal favorite nerd gathering, the DEVOtional, and would go on to comprise possibly the most roller coaster-like weekend of my life thus far.

Welp, after over a week, here it comes.

The aforementioned weekend really kicked off on Thursday (though I had a class the next morning). The members of DEVOtional veteran act Fight Milk, having come in early for rehearsals, found time in their schedule to come down to good ol’ Kent State so I could show them around.

I’ve been seeing Fight Milk at DEVOtional since 2019, and it’s been wild seeing them morph and mutate into what they are now. Not only do they always bring the most extreme amounts of fun, they also really get what DEVO is all about in a way. They are dedicated, and they respect what those old fogies were doing while still maintaining a Gen Z flair. Add that all three of their performers this year were coming from such long distances—lone constant Jackson from Seattle, Tavi from Finland, and Max from San Diego—and it only felt fitting that they should get to see where DEVO all began.

The first up important locale was Governance Chambers, the site of both the “Jocko Homo” music video and DEVO’s second ever show, in the Student Center. Luckily, one of its sets of doors was unlocked and no one was in there, so we slipped in without even a whimper from anyone actually working in the building. URBAN EXPLORATION! It was a great joy seeing the guys be such nerds in there, ESPECIALLY Max, the guy who, you know, covered the entirety of that second show.

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They also did some obligatory Mark Mothersbaugh poses:

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Before heading into town, I got to show them the site of the shootings on May 4, 1970, which DEVO’s bassist witnessed and credits with being the catalyst of the band. You would figure that the place where DEVO was born, and a place so historical at that, would be at least somewhat noteworthy for people to visit when they’re coming up for the DEVOtional every year. At least we got to do our part.

It was a solemn experience walking down to the victory bell on the commons and looking down on the Taylor Hall parking lot from the perspective of the National Guardsmen who killed four and wounded nine that day. But it was a worthwhile and important one, and all three also enjoyed the visitors center inside Taylor Hall as well, with all its artifacts providing context.

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Here they were looking for coin offerings that matched up with 1970 at I believe Allison’s parking space.
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We also stalked through McGilvrey Hall, which has some May 4 related displays on its first floor and is generally an incredible time capsule of the mid century in terms of its hallways. We peeked into the auditorium in Cartwright Hall, where DEVO have performed—there was a recital going on!—as well.

After some aimless wandering, we headed down the esplanade into town, got handed some Get Out Of Hell Free cards by some old dude, and made our way towards Water Street, which contains a row of buildings that can be seen in the video for “Secret Agent Man.” More nerd behavior ensued.

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When that was all said and done, our next goal was sustenance. Taco Tontos was on the menu. On our way down, we ended up running into a poster for DEVOtional, the whole reason these three nerds were here in the first place. We still don’t know the culprit.

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We would then discuss all the secrets of the group’s set list while Tavi ate the best burrito he’d had in his life. Actually, we all ended up getting burritos. What weirdos. How deviant from the norm. Another important lesson realized by these friends: Taco Tontos never disappoints.

We made our way back to the campus one last time so the guys could get an Uber and rest up for Friday’s activities.

It was an absolute blast showing the guys around, and it felt like a natural way to kick off the weekend. For me, it was definitely more than satisfying getting to see Kent State finally get some acknowledgment—especially from some talented nerds who have been finding themselves on the forefront of…whatever this modern battleground is. After all, you can’t go forward without knowing your history.

Or an empty stomach.

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Cope

Sunday, August 14th, 2022

I’m leaving for college Friday. All the finishing touches are being put on my departure, and the gravity is only now truly setting in. It’s overwhelming to think about sometimes. Not really terrifying, just overwhelming. Overwhelming in the way that thinking too much about something makes you feel, until you think too much some more and realize the workload is totally tolerable. It’s kind of annoying.

The Melvins have been the soundtrack to this pre-collegiate angst ever since I saw them over a month ago, and I assume they’ll still be there to help me through my post-pre-collegiate angst. Looking back, that show feels like it was the equivalent of stumbling into a church only to encounter a fire-and-brimstone preacher’s most imposing sermon and becoming a hardcore Christian on the spot out of fear and awe. To put it lightly, I’m hooked. It’s simple, really: I like things that go against things I don’t like, the list of which includes genre trappings, banality, the lack of a sense of humor, hypersensitivity, and stupidity. All of these things are incredibly overbearing, which makes it all the more satisfying to find a driving force of subversive defiance to those norms. Like the Melvins.

Looking at groups like DEVO and the Melvins feels like looking at a beacon calling forth all the boys and girls who are fed up with straight society and crave more than what it gives. Call me a moth to a flame, then—a calculated moth to a calculated flame, that is. I’m a freethinker, and I’m not into pledging blind allegiance. Following things mindlessly sets people up for failure. I say follow things that make you think. The Melvins make you think because one’s brain is constantly trying to decipher what the hell King Buzzo is singing whenever you listen to ‘em. Or sometimes I’ll find myself listening to a song (sometimes by the Melvins, sometimes by someone else) and questioning how their label let them release it in the first place or how it is even permitted to exist. Who green lights “Skin Horse”? Who? Seriously. This is no diss; I love that song. But on every listen, the perfection of its warped, tragic, alienating strain of insanity seems too good to be true. But it is true, and it’s concrete, and it feels very special to see.

Looking at the big picture, I don’t think that yesterday’s and today’s…what’s a good term…creative terrorists get the credit they deserve for their sheer bravery. Thanks to efforts like theirs, people like me get to hear things that tap into a very vital, rare, primal vein that satisfies many good, weird criteria. People are more pent up and frustrated than ever. And the things many of these people have always wanted to express but were too scared to, might just get belted into microphones by punk rock priests at sold out shows. Things like this encourage me to keep on marching. I wouldn’t be setting up for the real world with confidence without taking those influences with me.