the old punks web zine

A member of the Post Punk Progressive Pop Party (P5) Network
Updated Every Weekend

1/97 - 4/02. Then 5/04 - 4/05. A blog 4/05 - 4/06. A MP3 thing since 1/07

The Oldpunks site menu is here
The Analog CyberPunk page is here

New! Google Search Oldpunks.com (bottom of page)

Entry Eighty-Two: 08/30/2008: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears I

The now intermittent Perry Bible Fellowship offers a strip that's so perfect in every way the universe has folded over onto itself.

Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears I (download zip file at Rapidshare)

(Hypothetical) Prophets: "Fast Food" (PICK OF THE WEEK!)
2+2=5: "Meeting Mc. L."
20-20 Systems: "Dresden"
BOB: "The Things That You Do"
C.O.M.A.: "Femme Robot"
Comix: "Pomme D'Api"
Enzo Kreft: "I Don't Understand It"
Fall Of Saigon: "She Leaves Me Alone"
Family Fodder: "Savoir Faire"
Fault 151: "Radiation Man"
Fun With Animals: "The Test Of Love And Sex (stereo)"
Jacket Weather: "Trust"
X-Quadrat: "Kauf Dir Die Freiheit"
Yppasswdd Daemons: "Bin-Ksh"
Jirkel Junger Musiker: "Michael Neufeld"

With these Analog CyberPunk updates I'm going to write random things as if this were a blog and I was deluded enough to believe people wanted to know what I think about things specifically and in general.

I own a Buzzcocks t-shirt, the by-product of trading in a ton of records and not wanting any records back. If you google "What Is A Buzzcock?" the first choice is an entry from my my old blog. When I wear my Buzzcocks shirt I'm itching for someone to ask me if I'm a fan of The Buzzcocks, to which I'd reply no, I never knew they were a band, but I do enjoy a large vibrating dildo up my wazoo every now and again. Then I'd smile, cross my eyes a little and look off into space.

Fedor is the man. Any MMA talk that there's better than my fellow Ukrainian (my heritage, his hometown) is baby gibberish. His last match (first in the US) was sponsored by Affliction, another in an endless parade of small clothing manufacturers here in SoCal. In my day we vandalized posts and signs with punk band stickers - today it's small run designers of sunglasses and hoodies. It's now gangsta to turn your neighborhood into a ghetto by promoting designer belts and hats from companies you don't even work for. Affliction's HQ is in Seal Beach on my way home from eastward hither and yon. The landlord posted a wood sign reading "Welcome Affliction", which always makes me laugh. An affliction is a state of continuous suffering (as with a disease), anguish or torment. Clothing companies can't give themselves unpleasant names fast and hard enough. My favorite brand name is Ambiguous, because who doesn't want to advertise their confused sexuality. Every time I pass by the "Welcome Affliction" sign I picture the next few buildings having banners declaring "Greetings Tapeworm Larvae" and "Hooray for Debilitating Depression!" I crack myself up. The Chrysler Crossfire is a great looking car, but in a battle the worst place to be is in the crossfire. Hey, let's call it the Chrysler Kill Zone instead!

Entry Eighty-One: 08/23/2008: Book Review:

924 Gilman... The Story So Far:

Isocracy: "Rodeo"

Sweet Baby Jesus: "The Way She Gets Around"

Stikky: "Don't Lick My Leg"

This thick yet shallow tome is a collection of short essays extracted like teeth by editor Brian Edge from the memories of Gilman Street regulars olde and neu. To get it done Edge interviewed half of the 78 contributors, and I read into the consistent tone that Edge re-wrote most of it. 924 Gilman is fleshed out with photos, newsletters, flyers and newspaper clippings, but it’s less of a history than a pile of “What I Did On My Punky Summer Vacation” papers assigned to a class filled with kids you’d hire to appear in a remake of Suburbia. If teachers can grade papers like this all year without developing serious cases of mental carpal-tunnel they 'ain't getting paid enough. At best it’s young adult literature that fails on every level except offering information that contradicts most of its intentions.

The spirit and purpose of 924 Gilman is found in the book’s opening paragraph: “Gilman changes people’s lives. It gives them inspiration; it gives them hope. It’s what holds some people together when life is tearing them apart. It shows them that there are things in the world to care about, to take responsibility for. It instills in them the sense that some things do matter, and perhaps most importantly, that they themselves matter, especially those who’ve been told they would never amount to anything. How does Gilman do this? Simply by providing an opportunity that people can run with, or not, as they choose to. It is, after all, only a building. But it’s the people that take advantage of this opportunity that have made Gilman special, magical. These people are what this book is about.” Change Gilman to names of summer camps and you can say the same about Meatballs and Hot Wet American Summer. I’m glad for anyone who underwent a magical transformation at Gilman, but the US is filled with the Gilmans of a paper route, a circle of good friends, fast food jobs and community centers galore. That’s what Gilman is, a community center run by teenagers supervised by older teens and twenty-somethings. Conceived as Timmy Yo’s Kommie Kidz Klub, it’s stayed open due to luck, a forgiving landlord with no standards, an endless parade of volunteers and the largesse of The People’s Republic Of Berkeley, who most likely shed no tears when DiCon Fiberoptics left town after endless disputes with Gilman, leaving 400 people without jobs. Gilman Street is Lord Of The Flies with as much introspective honesty as the Soviet Union.

The back cover sports a photo of a man smirking while pointing to the “No Drugs” line on the Gilman rules chart that greets all visitors: “No racism, no sexism, no homophobia, no drugs, no alcohol, no violence.” Contributors admit to sexism at every corner, rivers of alcohol, needles of heroin, and violence? Boy Howdy is there carnage! It’s the self-imposed death sentence that defines most punk scenes. Skinheads play the role of zombies a la Day Of The Dead. Racism and homophobia aren't addressed either way. Gilman is more proof than you need that high school never ends. Pretty much everything it claims to be is mostly only true as a goal. Considering that punk scenes overflow with suburban rejects from dysfunctional homes, when people do wrong they do so spectacularly. Also proving that hell is other people, a number of writers admit that working at Gilman made them angry and mean. As they say at 924, “Gilman eats its own”.

Meetings devolve into the dictatorship of the proletariat where some animals are more equal than others. A meeting is stopped so another meeting can be formed to vote on the original meeting taking a vote. The loudest and angriest PC politics win arguments, but people themselves don’t change, so they’re mainly empty decrees. Sometimes the book is a study of passive vs. aggressive personalities.

Stupidity On The March! “People think they named the freeway exit after the club!” “The whole space stood as a threat by example.” On drinking in an all-ages venue: “When you’re enforcing the city’s rules inside the club, then it proves you are being the same as them.” On why someone dropped out of college: “UCB seemed like thirty thousand kids all stepping on each other to get ahead.” Who the hell in college CAN you step on to get ahead?! Gilman shut down for a short time after about two years and was taken over by new sponsors who called themselves The Alternative Music Foundation. Here’s a laugher: “Violence was a carryover from the previous operation.” Jane G. wrote she loved the MaximumRockNRoll letters section “because it was such an open democratic forum.” I guess you have to know MRR to know why that’s a scream. Then there’s Timmy Yo’s original decree that bands would never be announced. People would show up for the Gilman experience and hey, there’s a band playing over there! Sweet! He also came up with the idea that bands couldn’t play unless they volunteered at the club. Tim’s lead balloons crashed and burned, but at least he tried!

Some other tidbits: A few dozen kids lived at Gilman as a squat. A band was once beaten up on stage for posting sexist show flyers. One manager let a prostitute use the club to turn tricks. Shows were stopped and instant meetings held when something needed to be addressed by the committee during a show. The binding job on my copy was horrible. The pages fell out like playing cards. I must remember not to buy books like this that are not the product of accumulated research.

older MP3 entries are now here

 MP3 info here