It's the world's greatest holiday this weekend, so let's start an argument. Earth A.D.: underrated record, right? Clearly the most hardcore Misfits album, it's got none of the mystery or coolness of Static Age, none of the punk of Walk Among Us, none of the iconicism of the Legacy of Brutality collection. Or! Maybe it's got all of that together, just played really fast?
All I know is when my dog lays his weary muzzle on my leg to take a nap, I scratch behind his ear and whisper the lyrics to "Hellhound" to him.
I mainly, at that point in time, liked reading books and listening to CDs, and it was the latter that pulled a brick out of my mental wall on this issue. Sonic Youth had a song on their 1992 record Dirty titled "Youth Against Fascism", and it had the lyric "I believe Anita Hill/Judge will rot in hell" on it. It almost feels like an understatement to say that this lyric blew my mind. A man standing up for a woman---a woman he didn't know, especially---in a dispute between a man and a woman over sexualized mistreatment? I had never experienced that before, and probably thought of it as simply impossible. Most women treated other women who spoke up about this stuff like pariahs, so the idea of a man calling bullshit, and being so angry about it, was just unbelievable to me. It felt so incredibly subversive. I didn't want to be caught listening to that lyric. It seemed dirty to suggest that there was any alternative to simply enduring sexual harassment in silence.
Imagine a place where young boys learned that calling bullshit on men harassing women, and to support the women who did the same, was their obligation as men. Not in a mansplainy or patriarchal way, but as a way to police -- and fulfill -- their own masculinity and humanity. I learned that from punk rock.
I will never stick up for punk rock or hardcore as a place where women are free from harassment -- or where it's easy to be a nonstraight nonwhite nonmale person. No collection of teenagers and 20somethings is like that, particularly not one based around shared obsessions. But pivoting off Amanda's post, it is important that that is a value punk rock sets for itself, where you will be put on the defensive if you disagree and challenged if you do not live up to the standard.
Above my desk I keep a photograph that my wife bought for me of ABC No Rio. ABC No Rio is a punk club and (former?) squat on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan where every Saturday afternoon a motley assortment of bands perform. I think of it as the punk rock version of the Boys & Girls Club, because that was the role it played for me as a teenager. It socialized me and shaped my values. If you wanted to be part of the committee that booked bands, planned events and made decisions about the direction of the venue, then all you had to do was show up, commit to clean the place up, and submit your suggestion for consensus. That was DIY, an ethic that became a religion and taught teenagers about individual and collective responsibility.
Most importantly: it was supposed to be a place where you would be made to feel unwelcome if you groped someone in the pit; if you made a homophobic or racist remark; or if you engaged in otherwise destructive behavior.
Real quick. Rob Liefeld is one of the most hated and beloved comics creators in history. As any follower of @robertliefeld knows, he's an amiable guy who seems blessed with superhuman optimism, despite routinely drawing insanely violent comics for over 20 years. My experience is his haters actually want him to succeed: he's obviously talented, but his compositions feel lazy and his storytelling is inexplicable. Still, he's been on the receiving end of tremendous internet (and convention, and journalistic) vitriol, so he wrote a primer on dealing with it.
You are producing work that is consumed and judged by the public and with today’s social media and the 24 blogosphere, you better put on your big boy pants when you go outside. You are going to get poked. At some point, some where the worm will turn, it’s not a promise it’s a fact. Give me any one of your comic book sacred cows and I’ll show you the blog, the thread or the review that tears them a new one. It’s all in how you apply your perspective.
I arrived on the comic book scene in 1987, and I shot to quick fan favorite status on Hawk and Dove. How do I know this, because my editor kept reminding me that I didn’t deserve my success because I hadn’t earned it yet. What?? Anyway as I was drawing Hawk and Dove #5, my phone rang and it was Bob Harras , X-Men editor and the next thing I knew I was 19 years old and drawing X-men, X-Factor and Wolverine. I was given a chance to re-haul New Mutants and take it from the dog of the X-Men office to 1 million copies with its final issue. From there X-Force took flight, we rang the bell at 5 million copies, launched a decade long line of toys and accessories and then I launched the Image age with Youngblood #1 and 1 million copies a month. I knew what it was like to be a darling, a sure thing, guaranteed to move the proverbial needle. Youngblood #1 was my first brush with internet bashing, message boards were just emerging, but the criticism was drowned out by millions of copies flying off shelves.
Yeah, so, #teamliefeld. Get your money, man. Draw those weird feet, never draw a hand that isn't balled into a fist or a facial expression that isn't over the top. Do your thing your way. People only wish they had your success or could plausibly say they helped change an industry they love. And if people like me occasionally wish aloud that you drew more backgrounds or took a little while longer to develop a story, please know that we mean those criticisms to be constructive.
Somehow I lucked into landing -- not even soliciting -- a freelance magazine assignment that took me to New York Comic Con yesterday. (More on that as we get closer to the piece's publication.) I haven't been to NYCC in probably 17 years. Back then, I was interested in pleading with my mom to buy me comics and to attend the occasional panel discussion ridiculing Rob Liefeld. Now I got to breathe in the atmosphere of the nation's second biggest annual comic convention -- imagine the thin, brisk air of Alderaan, compressed into a basement occupied by thousands of sweaty youths and near-youths -- and, importantly, see the cosplayers.
Like these guys for instance. Behold the greatest cosplayer of all time.
This is a golden retriever named River who has proven she can overcome great fear. (Lightning storms, bathtime, etc.) When her owner walked her through the Javits Center, hordes of cosplayers stopped in their tracks to show their respect, begging for photos with her as their hearts melted. As you can see from Supergirl here.
My friend Annie Lowrey is going to the New York Times. Hooray! But that means Dahlia and Dave are now the only reasons to ever read anything in Slate, with the exception of Fred Kaplan, who doesn't write often enough.
Even if we put aside droll, hard-hitting journalism like this shocking expose of the Solo cup, Slate's mixture of cleverness at the expense of wisdom -- if we're to be generous with the definition of "clever" -- is distilled to a thick sauce of Slateness by Taylor Clark, who contends that the Strokes' Is This It is the "best album of the last decade." Clark compares Is This It favorably to Nevermind. If your friend made this argument to you at a bar, you would rub the bridge of your nose to stop yourself from calling a cherished friend a fucking idiot, reassuring yourself that he's trying to get a rise out of you and struggling not to give him the satisfaction. Slate pays people to provoke that kind of reaction.
Yes, yes: Is This It is a fine record, and an influential one. It's also neither as good nor as influential as any three Kanye West records of the last ten years, just to pick a competitor at random. But I'm just going to take the bait for one second, and it will involve me indulging Clark for just a moment. Take Is This It on its own merits. And then get a load of this from Clark:
Once Is This It finally landed in America (its release here had to be delayed so the band could replace the blistering—and not exactly flattering—“New York City Cops” after 9/11), the response was immediate and seismic.
No! You do not get to shovel an actual bit of insight into a parenthetical aside! (I'm squeezing the bridge of my nose, but it's not working.) "New York City Cops" is the best song on Is This It. By far. The Strokes excised the best song on its debut record because they were too chickenshit after 9/11 to risk interrupting of their rise to fame with something as trivial as the best song on its debut record. In the annals of rock and roll, there may be a few moments more craven, but it's hard to think of them, because the sheer audacity of cutting the best song on the record in a fit of careerism tends to concentrate the mind.
And yet this is all Clark has to say about the song! Look: if you take Is This It seriously, as either a work of art or a cultural artifact -- which, last I checked, is the entire point of the piece -- you have to say something about cutting "New York City Cops." I don't care what. Argue that it was an unimportant decision. Argue that the move was consistent with the style-over-substance posture that made the record great. Argue that the excision is ultimately trivial when viewed against the record's overall excellence.
But neglecting the removal of the best song the Strokes ever wrote and perhaps ever will write is pure laziness. And it's precisely that sense of laziness and self-satisfaction that defines the decline of Slate. A wag might say, It ain't too sma-haaaaaaart...
Valerie Caproni is the most important national-security official you've never heard of. As the general council of the FBI, she's had a hand in practically every significant domestic surveillance, evidence-collection and counterterrorism measure of the 9/11 Era. And today she's decamping from the FBI for the verdant, lucrative pastures of Northrop Grumman.
So who wants to join me in an ironic pop group themed around terrorism called Caproni Youth? I will drum, and I nominate Julian Sanchez as our frontman.
Having dealt with this FBI Islamophobia shit for weeks now, it was pretty dispiriting to read Frank Miller's long-awaited Holy Terror comic. The backstory: Miller has, for years, been working on a superhero comic about avenging 9/11 -- originally it was to star Batman -- that devolved into a screed against Islam. And this wasn't from some marginal creator, it's from one of the greatest geniuses in comic-book history. (Ronin, Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns, 300, Daredevil "Born Again," etc.)
It’s no accident that [Holy Terror is] being released ten years after 9/11. This comic would be unthinkable during the unity that the U.S. felt after the attack.
Instead, it’s a perfect cultural artifact of this dark period in American life, when the FBI teaches its agents that “mainstream” Islam is indistinguishable from terrorism and a community center near Ground Zero gets labeled a “victory mosque.” Call it the artwork of 9/11 decadence, when all that remains of a horror is a carefully nurtured grievance.
And with that, I'm taking off for Rosh Hashanah. L'Shana Tova to all my tribespeople.
Mmm, so on second thought, maybe Schism -- the storyline Marvel promises will Divide The X-Men Forever -- isn't really about an integrationist/secessionist debate. Maybe it's about the burdens of governance in an apocalyptic world. Or maybe that's a pretext for a personal feud.
Schism has been a more enjoyable story than it has a right to be. We've known before it started how it would end: the decimated remains of Mutantkind cleaved between the followers of Cyclops and the followers of Wolverine. What we haven't known is the issue that prompts the division.
The first three issues have been a kind of misdirection. There's a mutant-terrorist incident during an arms control conference in which Scott and Logan attempt to persuade the world on a Sentinal Ban Treaty. A group of mischievous kids takes over the Hellfire Club and unleashes chaos on Cyclops' attempt at P.R. rectification. To save the day, Scott allows one of the X-babies to kill people, ignoring Wolverine's objections and basic morality.
Now, a giant super-Sentinel is racing toward Utopia, the island haven of mutantkind, while the X-Men are basically out of commission. All that's left is Cyclops, Wolverine, and a bunch of untrained mutant children. Cyclops sees an army of last resort. Wolverine sees an unconscionable utilitarian calculation by a man who used to be the X-Men's moral center. And this is what splits Wolverine and Cyclops, (supposedly) irrevocably.
September marks the 20th anniversary of Nevermind. For the best take on it, read Latoya Peterson. I can only tell my story, which is that Nevermind was less important than Incesticide. Thanks to Amanda Marcotte for reminding me that I've been meaning to write on this.
I was 11 when Nevermind came out. And it was great! A great record that I liked a lot. But not a record that sounded much different to my unsophisticated ears than what was out there. That's because of the deservedly-derided mastering that coated Nevermind's amazing songwriting, performances and Butch Vig's virtuoso production under a gloss of radio-ready pop-metal. I think I convinced my mom to buy me the Metallica black album at the same time as Nevermind. The two records sounded the same to me, down to the chorus effect on the intro guitars on "Enter Sandman" and "Come As You Are." What, you think I got the Pixies reference on "Teen Spirit" at 11?
It took until I went to my friends' houses to watch Nirvana videos on MTV for it to really dawn on me that Nirvana were like nothing else out there. (My mom didn't have cable -- in fact, she just got it something like eight years ago; thanks, YES Network.) The Ed Sullivan send up of "In Bloom." The anarchy cheerleaders of "Teen Spirit." Wow. I remember taking a walk with my father from a Bay Ridge movie theater while he encouraged me to decipher the lyrics to "Come As You Are." See, he knew that Nirvana was different. (Even if he persists in deriding Dave Grohl as a drummer.)
The next year Nirvana released the apocrypha album Incesticide. I remember this very vividly: Bonnie Edner and I went to the Tower Records on Broadway near Bleeker Street and I bought it on cassette. The liner notes had me ignoring my friend on the D train home. Kurt Cobain was writing about getting the chance to access the world he imagined as a punk rocker in Aberdeen, unlocked for him like a video game level, and it turning out to be a big misinterpretation on his part. As it happens, there aren't copies of NME hidden in vending machines in London, even though something about the way he revealed that had me imagining there actually were. I must have preferred to see the world through Young Kurt's eyes rather than those of Kurt Cobain From Nirvana.
But it was the first two songs that told me there was no going back. "Dive" bridges the gap between the dirge of Bleach -- not that I knew what that record was at the time -- and the mutant pop of Nevermind. There could be no further debate about the uniqueness of Nirvana. But then "Sliver" comes on. Remember: at that point, I had no idea there was such a thing as pop punk. I was unprepared for that chorus, for the feedback introducing it, for the way the chords of the verse sound so brittle and abrasive, and especially for Kurt straining his voice to go up an octive in the third verse and beyond. (That still gets me every time.) And what could a 12 year old want more after the awkward, embarassed and sexually frustrated protagonist of "Dive" than the re-imagined child's temper tantrum of "Sliver"?
The correct answer is "Molly's Lips" and "Son of a Gun." Oh my God. You have to remember -- I didn't know what a Peel Session was (those liner notes taught me, though!) and I definitely had no idea who the Vaselines were or why they wanted to call their band that. By that point on the record, Nirvana are holding a clinic in punk rock. You know who definitely paid attention? Blake Schwarzenbach on "Boxcar."
"Son of a Gun" is a turning point. If you don't like that version of the song, you simply don't like punk rock. And at that point, we will shake hands without acrimony and part company. If you do, there is a very good chance that your life will never be the same, because you will spend it excavating the depths of punk rock, hardcore and all its sectarian offshoots for meaning. Forever.
And one of the first caves you will explore is "Aneurysm," which closes the record after some weird or very grungy ephemera. I submit to you that "Aneurysm" is the finest song Nirvana ever wrote. It's got arguably the band's best performance. It's got Kurt's second-rawest lyrics. ("Pennyroyal Tea" has to beat it.) It's got the most intense intro and then, a minute in, it becomes a completely different song. It's got the unexpected girl-group-style call and response in the chorus, which, given the backstory lyrics, I've got to consider a fuck-you to Tobi Vail. (Also up for debate: Is that chorus the birth of the Foo Fighters?)
No 12 year old can possibly understand "Aneurysm." For real: "Love you so much it makes me sick"? "She keeps it pumping straight to my heart"? All I knew back then was that "Aneurysm" was the obelisk in 2001 -- it meant something, and that something was intense beyond my understanding. To be explored forever.
Update: This is why Matt Yglesias & I are friends:
If “at this point in Rock history, Punk Rock (whilestill sacred to some) is, to me, dead and gone” then what was it while it lived?