Post-punk, pre-something else

Continuing on the theme thus far hacked out on this here blog of how one reconciles their punk past with their semi-adult present, I submit to you the case of one Sam McPheeters. Here is my appreciation for this wonderful, confusing man.

Mr. McPheeters, back when I was getting into punk of the non-ancient and disbanded variety, was a major inspiration to me. Method of inspiration one: Born Against, a noisy and bad-tempered NYC hardcore band that managed to be political without being suffocating, humorless or dogmatic. Method two: writing, most abundantly in Maximum Rock'N'Roll, the long running, horribly-named punk magazine, and also in his own Dear Jesus, probably the best fanzine of that era and possibly ever. Among a cohort who at the time was obsessed with being pithy and nerdily intelligent, Sam managed to sidestep the term paper feel that many of the other similarly inclined zines at the time had and just write like a normal person, only more so, turning phrases wonderfully without pretension or preciousness, making wit look effortless. The end result was a pile of magazines which, even now, in my jaded dottage, stand on their own - even if the idea of a two page spread debating the ethics of outing celebrities seems goofy.

McPheeters had a record label that released his band's records and a number of others of the same ilk, financed by a family inheritance of some kind. As with many idealists, reverses seemed inevitable; the whole empire seemed to peak around 1992 or so, until a public feud with one of the other bands on the label over distribution or something equally boring led to bad blood and a move to Virginia. With a noticeable reduction of its previous steely focus, Born Against released a number more records and quietly imploded. The loss of the band resulted in a 'tour eulogy' in Dear Jesus, an amazing day-by-day journal of discontent and sorrow which was condensed and retooled for a reissue of their discography. An excerpt provides fitting context:
At a certain point,time invested outweighed artistic potential. Our last practice was held in
Tonie Joy's basement (a joyful little museum cavern of lost junk, one of
three underutilized treasures of the final incarnation of the band, along
with drummer Brooks Headley and Tonie himself). Afterwards I walked down the
quiet rural Annapolis street until I was completely alone, leaned on an
aluminum guardrail and blubbered like a schoolgirl. I was crying not only
out of band grief but because one of my last tenuous links to a normal life
had just been severed. I was heading into a few terrible years of
rootlessness; no job, no money, no girlfriend, no ambitions. The thin line
separating me from the sad souls I saw in our audiences had been this band.

After the band died, Sam had two other bands: the occasionally excellent and often inconsistent weirdo electronic Men's Recovery Project, and the surprisingly punk Wrangler Brutes. Both bands had a clear absurd lyrical content, miles away from the political screed of Born Against, but throughout it all the writing continued in Error (Dear Jesus's successor of sorts) and several one-off mini-zines, all painting the portrait of a smart fellow mildly disgusted with the punk scene he played a substantial part in shaping, yet not seemingly willing or able to break into other more fruitful areas of expression. So many of the pieces from that period are kind of cringe inducing, like watching someone willfully injure themselves, or limit their diet exclusively to foods that they're allergic to.

Of late, it seems that he's been doing writing for an LA-area newsweekly, which is definitely a step in the right direction, but still far, far away from the novels that he should have published by now, if there was anything vaguely like a meritocracy at work on this planet. His most amazing work seems to be written while looking over the smoldering wreckage of something he used to believe in, which is a rather draining muse, so maybe that's the cause. Still, when you see how much navel-gazing garbage gets ghost-written every year, it seems a shame that even a thinly disguised autobiography has not made it into reality.

Back to me. In my stack of dusty and tattered fanzines, there is the final Dear Jesus with the words "I'm thinking in picture words and bubblegum" written on it in ballpoint pen. This was written by my friend Erika, in her sleep, at a summer pre-college program in Philadelphia; I had thrust it upon her to try to get her to be as psyched about the writing as I was. Also at this program was Hailey, who later introduced me to a girl who many years later became my wife. Born Against appeared on several mixtapes I made for her, and eventually she bought the original records, and later still I wooed her with my writings which were highly influenced by Sam's style. Who can really say how fate works?

tha crossroads

So, nonexistent readership; what's new? A couple of interesting things, capped off by the official gathering of tax documents to take to the accountants. I had to place my band in a Schiavo-esque vegetative state for a couple of months (although a phone call to clue in bandmates makes it seem like everyone else is independently frustrated with it, so maybe it's for the best).

The big reason for not officially having the free time for such ventures is that I'm working on the campaign of Bill Peduto, mayoral candidate for Pittsburgh. It's kind of been up and down. I'm ostensibly working on the grassroots part of the campaign, which is mostly involved with outreach to the many cynical and disaffected twentysomethings of our fine city. Being myself a slightly disaffected twentysomething myself (at least for the next couple of months), it's both an excellent opportunity to reach out to people I can relate to, and also an excellent reinforcement of how happy I will be to hand in my 20something ID card in five months. The Modey Lemon, Pittsburgh's biggest and most-appropriately lauded band, played a benefit / awareness show a couple of weeks back, which went well for turnout, and went well for the first 95% of Bill's speech before the band kicked it out. The crowd, with lots of the patches-and-piercing crowd in attendance, was actually quiet and respectful untill compared the ML to local patchouli users Rusted Root, which resulted in some uncomfortable laughter and lots of smirking from wiseacres on the internet the next day. A good chunk of the fight is to convince the kids that Bill is not a sleazy politician who is basically attempting to exploit the youth vote...which said misstep kinda builds the perception of. But, in the past two weeks, things seems to have cooled off and Bill is kicking some ass in normal settings. So, that's good. I wrote a little brochure highlighting some of the great things that Bill has done in the past which hopefully will be in print in the near future, which I'm much better at that attempting to chat with strangers. Anyway. The campaign marches on.

Meanwhile, speaking of cashing in the punk point account, I've appeared in the Pittsburgh City Paper twice this month, first for a letter criticizing the local crappy public radio station, and once as a small aside in a feature article on punk homeowners (in which it is noted that I am not active in the Scene at present). Not that this is any big shocker; I've been quietly extricating myself for years now, and haven't really considered myself 'punk' in a good number of years. I guess it's been on a downswing since my brief involvement with a certain political punk band and got exposed to the dirtier element of that scene - lots of talk, lots of pointing fingers at others, lots of low level swindling, lots of simplistic thinking. And this article has brought up a lot of the same kind of dumb; lots of tiring questions about what exactly is "punk" (music or lifestyle, or both, or neither). At one point all that stuff seemed the world to me, and now it just makes me tired. To paraphrase an old roommate, it's a great stage to go through, but it's unhealthy to dwell somewhere that you don't feel comfortable anymore.

In more tangible news - the new Beck album is really good! I totally wish he wasn't a scientologist!