MRR# 247
In the summer of 1991 I spent a month in Russia as a student. While there I took classes, visited museums and cultural institutions and hung out with some local punk and metal kids. One day me and some Russian punks and metallisti were sitting in a park on Vasilevsky Island drinking the terrible, warm, local beer. The kids I was hanging out with were total meatheads, they were obnoxious, irreverent, boisterous yobs, the kind of guys we used to call Quincy punks in the 80’s. As we downed our warm beer a hunched over grizzled old lady with an empty canvas bag walked over to us. Suddenly, everyone was quiet. I expected some wisecracks from the gathered crew, but instead they quickly rounded up all the empty bottles, and finished off the half full bottles with great seriousness. They dutifully filled the old woman’s bag with their empties and told her to come back later for the rest. She shambled off to return the bottles for the paltry few kopecks deposit they would garner. One of my companions, usually full of smart ass remarks, remarked with great concern, “this old woman, she works hard all her life to build socialism, fights the nazis, suffers for 60 years and now all her country can offer her is a few kopecks for returnable beer bottles” The assembled crew mutter their agreement at the human tragedy and utter waste, then go back to drinking their tepid brew.

I’ll always remember that old woman. The shit she had to live through, the oppression of Tsarism, the turmoil of revolution, the oppression of Stalinism, the privation and horror of the 900 days siege of Leningrad, the brutal hard labor and poor working conditions of the soviet era, only to wind up begging in the streets because the pension her government promised her for her sacrifice has been eroded by inflation or not paid at all by a corrupt and bankrupt state. I guess I’m not trying to make any point here, just don’t trust the government, leaders, politicians or their promises, because in the end they are the only ones who benefit from the common people’s labor. Just something to think about.

I was at the record store today flipping through the 50 cent 7”s. Most of them dated from the early 90’s, a period where bad rock ran amok. There were thousands of utterly forgettable pop punk/indie/grunge type bands in the early 90’s and most all of them released at least one mediocre to terrible 7” single. Now used and cut out bins from sea to shining sea are filled up with this vinyl solid waste. Forever it will stand as a testament to the lack of wisdom of a generation of derivative bands who thought that playing a few well attended house parties meant there was a global market for their music. Sad as it is, I actually kind of miss the days of mediocre bands putting out forgettable 7”s. At least in those days posterity was only saddled with two to four sub par songs and a poorly laid out Xerox sleeve. In the current era, bands of a similar stamp feel the need to release not a 7” but a full length CD of sub par twaddle. Decades of affluence, the consistent “dumbing down” of the youth culture, and the proliferation of home recording equipment, desktop publishing programs and cheap CD reproduction mean that for the foreseeable future the world will be flooded with plastic box after plastic box of basement recordings of bands who should have probably stayed in the garage for six months or a year longer before trying to play out or record. I’ve talked before about “the death of the demo tape and birth of the shitty 7” followed by “the death of the shitty 7” and the birth of the shitty full length CD” but it seems like things have reached more or less a crisis point. The pressure to record and produce some sort of commodity is so great that the vast majority of bands are releasing substandard material far before they have matured as players or performers. As I noted a few months ago, the few bands (like Japanese HC bands) who take their time and concentrate on quality, are rewarded with cult followings. The rest are greeted with abject indifference. It’s harder than ever to sell records or get people to turn up to shows for all but a handful of very popular or hyped bands. And a big part of this is the general lowering of the bar across the board for what is credible material to release and tour on in the punk/hardcore scene. So few releases these days can truly be labeled as “All Killer, No Filler” and few bands seem to be able to hold an audience rapt with sheer power song after song. I hate to be so negative in an era when much great hardcore IS being made, but it seems the audience continues to contract rather than grow as people are unwilling to gamble on records or shows that they think might not be worth their time and money. Hundreds of labels are releasing thousands of records each month and I truly question how much of it will be remembered 10 or 20 years from now. DIY hardcore, “too much of a good thing” You be the judge.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1984

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