Festivus Grievances 2015

Many of the taint ticklers are exhausted, given various struggles throughout the year. Fortunately, we found solace in music, booze, and/or friends. A depressing part of airing our musical grievances is the persistence of the issues year after year.

Anita Papsmear:

(Is busy contemplating Null’s conflicted fascination with Taylor Swift.)

Beert:

Musically, 2015 has not been a total disaster. Those who feast on pop-drivel continue to do so. Since KTEQ regained it’s broadcasting status a couple years ago, I find myself tuned in to far-from-mainstream music, with shows switching every 3 hours. The notes keep rolling on as they have for eons.

I don’t really have much to complain about, on the music front. I tend to keep myself immersed in what I enjoy, and I’ll venture outside of my comfort zone from time to time to give something new a chance. I could complain about the music the kids listen to, but that is a typical reaction of every generation when it comes to understanding the draw of the younger generation’s music. In time, much like everyone else, the younger kids will have their memories of the music of their youth and will gain an appreciation for some of the music that came before them. And they will question the musical taste of those who follow. In essence, it isn’t a complaint, just a right of passage for us. And I’m at the age now where I don’t understand what the kids are listening to (you call THAT hardcore?).

Now, bring on the sweets so I can begin my holiday weight gain!

Class Warrior:

I’m too tired to move.

I sat down a while ago thinking I was taking a break from walking, always walking. I must have passed out. I need to keep moving or else I’m not safe. I’m so hungry, though. I can’t find enough food ever since Fred died. The raiders killed him when he tried to protect our food stash. I hid behind the rubble pile. It’s what he told me to do. He was right. They would have cut my throat just like they did to him. Or worse.

He looked out for me. He was the only one. I miss him so. I’d never had a boyfriend before the war started. The war. And it was all going so well for me, for a change.

I’ve always been big. Fat. Obese. Whatever word you want to use. I tried all the diets. Nothing worked, or if it did, it wasn’t for very long. The doctor told me to lose the weight or I would get diabetes or I might die before I turned forty. It scared me, which is the response the doctor wanted, I guess. Then she told me about gastric bypass. I couldn’t afford it right then, but I did have quite a bit of money in the bank already, so I saved up for a few months (with some help from Dad) and got the surgery.

It worked so well! I lost a hundred and fifty pounds in the first year. It was as if my body were disappearing. Pounds and pounds sliding away, away, never to return. It was a pain in the ass having to eat such small portions and taking all those vitamin supplements, but I did it. For two years, I did it.

Then the bombs started falling.

One of my first thoughts when the lights went off and never came back on was: I hope I can still find my vitamin supplements at the store. But everything stopped. All the grocery stores closed. Everyone was looting everything. There were lots of dead bodies. Some of the bodies disappeared. Maybe their people found them. Other bodies are still where they were when they died.

It was so confusing. I don’t know why the war started. I was never much of a news or politics follower, but I did hear about an unstable government in Russia from my neighbor. That same neighbor used to say that we had elected a fascist too, but I don’t know about that. The president seemed awfully angry whenever I saw her on TV, talking about immigrants and Muslims and who knows what else.

Everything fell apart overnight. I couldn’t go to work. The train stopped running, and most of the roads were blown up. I saw a couple of months later that my office building downtown wasn’t there anymore—it was just a big pile of bricks and metal—so there was no point in going. I tried calling Dad, but the phones didn’t work anymore. I hope he’s okay. He lives in Omaha now. I can’t walk that far to see him. My car is out of gas. I should have filled it up before the bombs, but how could I have known?

Once the food in my fridge and cabinets was gone, I had to leave my house, but I was scared to go out the front door. There were gunshots every now and then, some close, some far away. I checked with my neighbor first. She didn’t answer the door. No one was there. I’m ashamed to say it, but I tried the back door. Maybe she had some food! It looked like someone had broken the lock, so I went in. I found her dead on the kitchen floor. All I remember is screaming and running away. I went back to my house, grabbed some clothes and my vitamins, then got in my car and left. I haven’t been back to my neighborhood since. What would be the point?

The car ran out of gas after I’d gone about twenty miles. I didn’t know where I was going. I had to get out and walk. After a while a young man came up to me. He showed me the palms of his empty hands, as if he were trying to show a snarling dog he meant no harm. He told me his name was Fred, and he knew where to get some food, and did I want to come with him. Yes, I did. Later he told me that I looked like a lost puppy, so he thought he had to do something to help me. Everyone loves puppies.

But the main reason Fred and I came together was for protection. I needed him. He said he needed me, but I don’t know. A puppy is not very good at protecting people until she grows up. I wonder if I did. He had to show me how to use his handgun. It didn’t take me long to learn how to shoot and to take care of it.

I killed a man with it. He shot at us first, though.

It was at the old pharmacy I used to go to for my prescriptions. He was in the building, probably rooting around for painkillers. We surprised each other. I found out he was a bad shot. I still don’t know if I can shoot worth a damn or not, but he is dead and I am alive. I got lucky, I guess.

The supplements were there. We found enough to last for a long time. Quite a bit of food as well. A lot of it was moldy, but the packaged food was fine. I always wondered if that stuff would make it through a nuclear war. Are we in a war? Is it nuclear? The explosions were so bright and so big. There has been no news. No one has come to help. We have had to help ourselves.

Killing someone is hard. I thought it might be. I can still see his dead face if I close my eyes. I did that. But I know I would do it again if I had to.

I wonder what the man was like. Before the war, I mean. Did he deserve it? I hope he deserved it.

Fred. Before we came together, he would gorge himself on whatever food he could find, then move on. Moving on kept you from being a target. Establishing a base was dangerous. Trying to make a home was out of the question. We tried, though. We thought the building on the outskirts of the old city was safe enough.

Fred. My love. He loved me too. He told me. He didn’t care about my stretch marks, my loose skin. He loved me. I told him about my surgery, of course. That’s why we tried to make a home. A refuge. I cannot gorge myself and run, even if it’s safer to eat that way. We had to build a stash of food so that I could eat small amounts multiple times a day.

How long did we live this way? A couple of months, maybe? It’s funny how quickly marking the days exits your life when there are no calendars. When there are no jobs you have to go to. The moon waxed and waned two or three times. It was warm when we met. The leaves had fallen from the trees and it was cold when they killed him. Is that accurate enough?

Fred warned me that it couldn’t last. The raiders would find us eventually. We had chased off two gangs already. I used up all my bullets the second time. My gun was just for show after that.

The third gang came. There were four men. They didn’t have guns. They had crowbars and tire irons and baseball bats. And a knife.

I hid. They never saw me. I tried to be as quiet as I could, but I know I screamed at least once. They must have been high or so focused on what they were doing that they didn’t hear. Or maybe it was a silent scream.

Fred got one of them with his rifle. Still they came. They must have been desperate. Aren’t we all, though. They reached our building before Fred could reload. I saw it all.

They took everything. They laughed as they stole. They didn’t seem to care that their friend was dead. One less mouth to feed. One less person to fight for the spoils.

Now my stash is gone. My vitamins are gone. My Fred is gone. Dead and buried. Those raiders took it all from me. I keep coming back to where I piled the brick rubble on top of him. Maybe it was a bad dream. Maybe Fred will appear, head poking above the ruined wall as he climbs the stairs out of the basement. The snow sticks to his black hair and melts, slowly, so slowly.

He was mine. It was our home. We only had a little while together. It’s not fair. He loved me.

After that, I had no choice but to keep moving. I don’t go far. I can’t bear to be away too long from Fred’s resting place. But food is so scarce. I haven’t found any the last four days. All the stores are empty. It’s so cold.

I have to keep moving. The gangs might find me. I’m too tired, though. Exhausted. Maybe I will get my strength back if I just sit against this wall a while longer.

Who am I kidding? I’ll be dead soon, whether I move again or not. I just want to be left in peace as I starve and freeze.

At least I’m finally thin.

Dave:

I really developed my taste for music in the early nineties when a lot of the traditional musical tropes were thrown out the window. Bands like Helmet, the Melvins, NIN, and Tool got to put comparatively radical ideas out through major music distributors. Music was exciting and revolutionary. As a consumer of music, I have maintained pretty high expectations regarding creativity and artistic integrity in the artists I support. Up until about five years ago I have been lucky enough to live in a city with a musical community that has shared my aesthetic values, and through the local underground I have been able to find national artists that also operate with the same qualities. I don't see the old spark so much any more. The qualities that made the Portland, Or. arts community worthy of support have been boiled down to empty buzzwords, and most of the folks that built the community have left, or been pushed out by those with excessive social and economic capitol, which allows them to dominate creative dialogue with predictably mediocre results. At the national level punk and metal seem to be going through a cycle of regression. I simply have better things to do with my time these days. It was fun while it lasted.

Five-Inch Taint:

On the whole this was a great year of music for me. Therefore, I do not have many grievances.

First: I have to mention an occurrence at concerts that I do not see going away anytime soon: taking pictures and video of the band while they are playing. It seems that no matter where I stand, off on the side, in the back, or right up front, unless I am in the first row, my concert experience is mediated through cell phones (and even some tablets…what the fuck?). Seriously, what do you expect to get out of doing this? Do you honestly think that if you record parts of the show and immediately upload that picture/video of horrid quality to whatever social media is the flavor of the month more people will think you are cool? I do not give one iota of a fuck how many “likes” you get. You are ruining the concert experience and even the performance of the band, because, apparently, your self-worth as a human being is tied to “connecting” with others, at that specific moment, who are not present with you. This shit does not even make you happy as you constantly seek out more and more pseudo-praise from your “friends” who you don’t even know well enough to invite to go to the concert with you. This trend isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. . 89% of cell phone users have used their cell phones at a social gathering (like concerts). And, it’s not making people any happier or allowing them to enjoy their experience more. 82% of the people polled found that using cell phones during a social gathering takes away from the atmosphere as some consider it being socially disruptive. No wonder Sherry Turkle thinks that we are increasingly Alone Together. We’re photographing more and experiencing less.

Second: Riot Fest 2016. A few weeks ago (sometime in November), I received an email from Riot Fest telling me that early bird tickets were already available for the 2016 festival in Denver. Last year I paid probably 70 bucks for early bird tickets. 70 dollars for a three-day festival is not bad. This is true especially when they tend to bring in great big acts like The Cure, System of a Down, The Buzzcocks, Iggy Pop, and so much more (not to mention the not so big, but just as great acts). But, this year, they raised the early bird price to 100 dollars. Now, keep in mind, you purchase these tickets before they announce which bands have been booked. So, you’re putting your faith in the festival promoters to bring in some great bands. This would be all fine and good except that there seems to be a disturbing trend in which the promoters are bringing in a wider variety of bands to appeal to a broader audience. While I’m not against a diversification of musical styles (a colleague once referred to SoDak and myself as “musical omnivores”), I am not confident in the direction this diversification is moving towards. So, fuck you Riot Fest. I’ll still probably buy tickets to your festival, but, fuck you nonetheless.

Third: One word, Danzig. This year, musician and perennial horror-show diva, Glenn Danzig decided to grace our auditory nerves with a cover album. The album, that shall not be named as that would give it too much credit, is the musical equivalent of cats fucking. You know what I’m talking about—the horrific pangs of the female cat as the male cat jams his barbed dick into the female to scrape out a rivals semen. Cannibal Corpse couldn’t write a more horrific song about torture sex. Because that’s what it is, torture. And, so is listening to Danzig’s new album. Let me reiterate this, it is the auditory equivalent of being brutally tortured by a barbed cat dick sliding in and out of your ear canal for over 35 minutes. Cats certainly don’t fuck for that long and for good reason. But, for some reason, I listened to that album three times.

Other than that, I was reasonably satisfied with music this year.

Jimmy “Explosive Diarrhea” B:

Adele: I don’t really have a problem with Adele. She helps us concretely understand what is going on with the record industry. Adele has a good voice, and her songs are catchy and accessible to anyone who cares to listen. She has sold around six million records in the United States. Okay, now step back and think about Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and Taylor Swift, and you see a huge talent gap. Why is Adele the new golden child? My thought is that the portion of music buying consumers – those who are not willing to spend hours searching out great music from independent artists—are starved, ravenous actually, for something that fills their need for real music. The music industry, like the film industry, like the news media, like the ____ (insert money making interest here), has struck upon a formula for increasing capital. This formula is based upon the idea that what worked previously is sure to work again. Hence, the recycling of crap like the aforementioned d-bags of the music industry. This formulaic idea is not relegated to only the major labels or pop music. Read below.

Metal music: Dave, in a recent listserve post said that heavy metal has regressed. My first thought was to dismiss this since there are a lot of interesting metal bands. But, the more I thought about it, the more I agree with Sir Dave. Quick, without overthinking it, name three popularish metal bands doing groundbreaking work that did not exist prior to 2000. It’s not an easy task. Most of the really interesting bands that come to mind for me are bands like Kreator, Napalm Death, Onslaught, Cannibal Corpse, Opeth, etc. But, they have all been around for a long time. Most of what has been selling well in recent years has one of two qualities. First, we have the retro 70s sound. I am referring to bands like Blood Ceremony, Witch, Ghost, and Uncle Acid. Second, we have bands like Torche, Red Fang, Mastodon— and it pains me to write this—The Sword (the new album is crap), who have taken pop-metal to new heights of shitdom. I admit to liking a fair number of the retro-style bands; The Tower is one my current favorites. I think that variety is desirable, but the trend among even small labels is towards promoting one of these two trends in metal music. It truly is a step backwards.

Dave: How dare you make me think on a day when I just want to sit back and listen to Red Fang; you dick!

Mike Thrasher: Every year the Hawthorne Theater in Portland, Oregon, makes my grievance list for its bad sound system. A friend of mine recently told me that Mr. Thrasher, owner of the H. Theater, has installed a new sound system. I now feel like I am obligated to go to a show there to check out the quality of the system. If it is truly improved, I will miss these yearly rants. And, Thrasher is getting a thrashing here because I may never get another chance.

Adele again: How dare you make me write about you in a positive light. I will never do it again.

Kloghole:

1. Fuck U2. I saw a bunch of coverage of them and the Queens of Death Metal or whatever the fuck their name is. Paris, really? Of all the fucked up places in the world to feel sorry for, you feel sorry for Paris? Go fuck yourself, U2. Also, thanks for reinforcing the idea that the band is more important than the 70 or so folks who were killed at the show. I am sure the family of the merch guy loved your fucking tribute.

2. Of the two shows I went to this year, one was a bad attempt to cover Led Zeppelin for a Halloween gig in a local bar. Blah! I am so exhausted from this year, I am not even sure if those are the only shows I saw. SoDak will have to remind me.

3. 2015 did suck an infected testicle on a leprous lion with Tourette’s. Can’t wait for 2016! Woo hoo!

Sweet Dreams Motherfuckers!

Null:

1. Disappearing Music:

Basically, everything I have written the last several years concerning how the new digital landscape is destroying the physicality of music, from production to consumption, remains true. See my previous years’ Grievances. I’m losing this battle.

2. Ryan Adams covering Taylor Swift’s 1989 album.

I hate the fact that I love it.

3. Morrissey Reissues/Remasters

The Morrissey remasters/reissues that have taken place the last several years are very disturbing in the sense that not only did they change the artwork but also fucked with the song sequences. One simply does not change an album’s art work and song sequence. When record companies do so, they lobotomize our personal connections and histories with these releases. It is sacrilege—regardless of the artist. It is the equivalent of Nazis’s riding dinosaurs.

4. Stupid Motherfuckers on the Internet talking about music.

I saw a petition online wherein someone was trying to get enough signatures to stop Phil Collins from coming out of retirement. Hey look, I’m not chomping at the bit to hear a new “adult contemporary” Phil Collins record either but until you are able to write an album as good as Face Value or a power-ballad as good as “Against All Odds,” shut the fuck up. Better yet, try playing the drums on the album Duke. Stupid motherfuckers probably weren’t even born when “Separate Lives” and “Take Me Home” hit the airwaves. Who ever thought a little, pudgy, English, balding, prog-rocker that is obsessed with Motown and the Alamo could ever write so much interesting and weird music unheard under an avalanche of hits? He is far from perfect, but he’s the only Phil Collins we have.

5. Lemmy being sick during Riot Fest in Denver.

I finally had my chance to see Motorhead live. Lemmy was sick—he couldn’t take the altitude in Colorado. I felt bad for Lemmy. I felt really bad for me. Sad.

Scott:

(Is reading a book manuscript on a never-ending commute.)

SoDak:

1. Amazon selling records burned onto CD-Rs. This past year, I ordered four CDs from Amazon. When the package arrived, I was surprised to discover that Amazon just burned the music to a CD-R and printed a cover. Given how shitty CD-Rs are, the quality sucks. There are errors in the transfer. I could have just downloaded the music and burned to a CD-R myself, if I had known what I was getting. When I looked back at the Amazon page, I noticed that there is small print indicating that what was being ordered was a CD-R. Fuck me. Fuck them.

2. Stage divers at the Adolescents show. The Urban Lounge has a small stage. The club is quite intimate. From time to time, the audience has an asshole or two. At the Adolescents show, there were a couple folks who were repeatedly stage diving. One of the individuals kept kicking members of the band when he jumped into the crowd. He hit the singer a couple of times in the face, chipping the latter’s teeth. Finally, the singer got pissed and walked off the stage, ending the show. Some folks in the crowd seemed to take pride in being assholes and started yelling shit at the band.

3. The mohawk dumb ass at the Stiff Little Fingers show. As the Stiff Little Fingers were about to start their set, this asshole told everyone that he was so excited, because “Alternative Ulster” was his favorite song. Of course, the band was going to play this classic, but they were going to play it toward the end of their set. This did not satisfy Mr. punk rocker. Between every song, he would yell out things such as “That song fucking sucked,” “You suck,” and “Fuck that dumb song.” Then he would scream, “Play a song for me. Play my favorite song. I want to dance.” Guess, he thought that the band was there simply to do as he pleased, and that being a fuckin’ dick was the way to accomplish this.

4. Hearing Dio’s song, “Eat Your Heart Out,” used in a Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s commercial.

5. Disappointing albums by artists I generally like. This year the list includes the following: Dar Williams, Emerald; The Pine Hill Project (Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky), Tomorrow You’re Going; Josh Ritter, Sermon on the Rocks; Wilco, Star Wars; and Sun Kil Moon, Universal Themes.

Travis:

(Is chasing his child around the room, while listening to The Sword.)