I want to talk about an incident that occured at the Bowery
Ballroom this past Thursday. I was most excited to see
Barry Bliss on such a big stage and sound system. Barry's
music is almost always a very emotional thing for me and
especially so this night something broke open inside me.
i was in a very... tense space, feeling that kind of fear
constantly creeps around snaking out, and then these
sounds and words wash over it all and there is this divine blankness for a moment which immediately begins to taint, and as it colors i see how things are and ought to be. I was in no head for taking bullshit, which i swear is rare, i am a very peaceful person. But during the next act, the Baby Skins", these two guys behind me who had been somewhat annoying during Barry's set became complete pricks. They were making comments, some of them random, some of them rude, and some of them very hateful towards the act on stage. Worse, when the Baby Skins whistled a melody on a part of a song the two guys then whistled the same meolody throughout the rest of the song and continued to whistle the same melody through the next song which was in a different key and this of course was a disturbance, annoying, detracting from the music. I heard three seperate people ask them to stop talking, and many more glancing in their direction. I am not sure what overcame me and it is out of sorts but none the less i turned around to see who exactly these guys were. I actually recognized them them. They had been at a Barry Bliss show a few months ago and were loud and rude and distracting and i thought the show was awful and i attributed that solely to them. So i see who it is and i was pissed and i just stood there looking at them, then i looked them both in the eyes, just starring at them and then one of them laughed and said, "You know, the stage is the other way" and i said, "I was just trying to decide...," and they both laughed and then i continued,"which one of you i'm going to punch in the face first." I really don't know where that came from, but that's how i felt. And they were taken aback for a second, and i said, "why don't you get the fuck away from me?" And we sort of argued and i told them that they were pricks, and they said they didn't care what anyone thinks of them. And i asked them, "What about what you think? You must know you're pricks." Then i threw my cigarette butt in one of their beer mugs and walked away, but the guy followed me so i smacked his beer out of his hands. Then he started screaming about how i had to buy themanother beer and i told them to fuck off and Dina Dean stepped in and i walked away and was done with it, but later they decided to fuck with me and one of them stood directly in front of me and started leaning back like he didn't see me, so i reached between his legs and squeezed and he let out a yelp and jumped up a bit then turned and pushed me and said real angry, "don't you fucking touch me" and i said "don't you fucking lean on me and i pushed him a few times and he said stop pushing me" and i said "I'm not pushing you, it's a new dance, all the kids are doing it" and he said "I don't know that dance" and i said "that's because you're fucking lame." Then Crystal from the Baby Skins grabbed me and stood in their way, and Angela was there too. The guys put on their fake air and said to Angela and Crystal, "You guys are so good. Your set was great" and Crystal starred back at them, and then sweet Angela who almost never says a meanspirited thing gave those fuckers the finger, because she's rock and roll. It happens that i know someone, a really good person and a dear friend of mine, who is an acquantence of these guys, and says they claim to be big Barry Blis fans. I told this person i know that those guys are full of shit. There whole gig is being annoying and ruining shows and then pretending they were just having a harmless good time and that they are really into the music. If these guys ever listened to Barry's music for real they would realize they are asshole and they would slit their wrists. I don't know how i'm supposed to deal with these guys. I mean if i am ever at a Barry Bliss show and they are there i will have to leave or a scene will surely insue. But i mean if they came to the show i am playing with Barry June 1st i don't know what to do. I would probably alert the club to the situation thenif they were disruptive, and they always are, they would be asked to leave. I know that these guys are over priveledged, which can either lead to a hightened sensitivity or can lead one to being a spoiled prick as is the case for these guys. I hate them.
Hey now! Here's my chance to say some things about history
and community. May 22nd 2001 I, Cockroach, caught a
Greyhound up to NYC because all i want to do is play music.
I have always loved music. When i was three years old i was the
sort of class dj in my preschool room, always spinning records.
Santa Claus gave me a Mickey Mouse record player for my fourth
X-mas. I don't know what happened to that turntable, but i
still have a lot of those old records, Smurf's Sing-a-long,
Disco Duck, the Anne soundtrack, etc. The first "real"
record i bought was Prince's "Purple Rain" when i was
six. A few years later i was totally into Fiftie's rock like Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, Eddie Cochran, the Platters. Then i went to visit my cousin Scott for the summer when i was like ten. He was all about Guns 'N' Roses and Motley Crue and shit, and he turned me on to this music. It was also this summer that i really got into Tom Petty. A year or so later my family moved to Virginia near where Scott lived. Scott's father had bought him a low end Stratocaster and a little Marshall amp. Scott and i would pretend we where in a band, but we didnt understand how to write and it was really pretend. Then when we were like thirteen fouteen we hear Nirvana and Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr., which leads to us dicovering the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and the Dead Boys and the Buzzcocks, and somehow this music makes us realize that we can actually write and play songs for real, that heart will patch together ability. Scott and i started a band called Cool hand Puke with a kid named Eric Kane (to this day i've never played with a more intuitive drummer, and he was 12 at the time). We played a lot of those battle of the bands things and at this "youth center" club called the Cave which was run by this middle aged cokehead fuck-up named Kevin Bender whose parents owned a succesful chain of video arcades in northern Virginia. We played shows with speed metal bands like Skraelinx or weirdo bands like Slut Burger or a lot of lame ass Pearl jam sounding bands like Powder Monkey. A pretty shitty scene. Cool hand Puke honestly wasn't very good, though we did progress. But once Eric Kane got really into hardcore punk and straight edge aestetics, and Scott and I got into acid rock and smoking pot it was all over. Last i heard Eric kane was an integral part of the Richmond, VA hardcore scene, which is very vital though it all sounds the same. Anyway Scott and i tried to start another band, but it fizzled out and we got other interests. By the time i was 17 i was listening to a lot of hip-hop, and the rallying cry was "fourties and blunts, kid" I went to college in Florida for half a year before getting expelled. I was studying business administartion. I had'nt written or performed in a few years. Around this time i got into Tricky and the Lords of Acid. Also the Beastie Boys and A Tribe Called Quest. I returned to Virginia after expulsion. Scott was around and he had been spending time with our old friend Chris' older sister Katie. I started writting songs with them. Katie and i started snorting heroin together, We stared a band called the Honey Bluntz. Katie was sort of our guru. She took us to Norfolk, Virginia and we rehearsed with a drummer and bass player she knew. We recorded a cassette in Washington, D.C. at a place called WGNS where GVSB and Tsunami and others have recorded. Somehow we got a show at CBGB's in NYC. It was really our only show ever and it was a disater. It ended with a very drunken me calling KT a "stupid whore" and a very drunken she flicking her cigarette butt in my face. And then back in Virginia, a very sober me decided i really wasn't interested in playing in a band or playing music at all actually. I felt like i'd never written an honest song, because it had always been with motives other than expression. I don't know what i am trying to say. But i knew i wwasn't intersted in dealing with inner personal dynamics. After this i got involved with this shady guy named Victor. I was helping him out at his sandwhich shop. I started smoking rock cocain habitually and this became the center of my life. I started driving this guy Darrell around on pick ups and deliveries in exchange for free shit. I was totally strung out. There came a divide where i could either run away from this shit or it was going to consume me. I took a train to Colorado to vist my cousin Scott who was living out there. I stayed a few weeks, smoking KB and going up into the mountains and enjoying the really mellow feel they have there. I returned to Virginia clean. This is where i get to the parts about community.
There was an acoustic guitar in my house. i had never really played. I played bass not very well in Cool Hand Puke and i sang in the Honey Bluntz. I figured out a few chords and i poured out a handful of songs right away, with no agenda, just expelling shit from me. And then i saw this was the most fulfilling thing i could do. I made a record, "Acid Death Chants from the Next Erosion" at WGNS just me and a guitar. It felt so right. And complete. I didnt even imagine a band, it was not only unnessisary, it would deminish the intensity. I went to some open mics in Virginia but every one thought i was weird (mostly because i didnt like Dave Matthews or Phish) no mostly because i am weird. So then i moved to Richmond, VA. Mostly the music there is hardcore, plus a few goth and jam bands. I was able to find a small nitch though at a club called Hole In the Wall. It was at this time that i went to visit a friend from Florida who now lived in NYC. I went for a couple of days. My friend lived in Chelsea. There is a bar there called the Gaslight, copped from the old club, and this guy named Arlan was running this open mic there. I played a couple of songs. I met Marilee. And i saw this green haired freak rip open his chest and his fucking guitar. I went back to Richmond, and i hooked up a show for Arlan on his tour (this was early 1999. Then i visited Arlan in Brooklyn a few times and he brought me to the SideWalk Cafe on a Monday night and i was overwhelmed and i sat in the back, and i sat, and i sat, and i sat, and eventually i played a song and some people said they liked it. I knew something real was going on, but i felt also far from it ( which i was). I wanted to move to NY but it was beyond my means. Virginia seemed like a dead end. I went to Athens, GA. A great place to live, and probably a great place to have a band, but a shitty place to be an acoustic musician. I went to one open mic where i heard three seperate versions of "All Along the Watchtower." That summer my friend who'd lived in Chelsea was living in Hell's Kitchen and his roommate left for the summer and so i got to stay there for free for a couple of months. Right away i went down to the Sidewalk on a monday. The guy who normally ran the show, Lach, was out of town and that green haired freak i'd seen at the Gaslight, Joie/ Dead Blonde Girlfriend, was in charge, and i felt good because he remembered me, and around 1am i played my song "Protest Finger" and Joie asked me if i wanted to play a show, and i certainly did want to. I stayed till the end of the night, and my guess is i didn't speak to a single person the whole time. I saw Paleface for the first time that night, he played "Truck" and knowing nothing about him other than what i saw on that stage i knew he was the real deal. I stayed till the end and sat and listened to Joie and Paleface and this guy Eric talk. And i went back to 46th st. feeling like something was going on. I got to know a couple of people sort of, like Randi Russo and James Broughel. I would go the the Raven Open Stage and at the end everyone would leave except me and Joie would go sit on the corner of Ave A and 10th St and smoke cigarettes and talk. And these talks were heady and inspiring and lasted for hours, and i wish they'd lasted for ever. After two months i had no money and nowhere to stay and i went back to Athens and i was depressed and pissy, and then i resigned myself and i wrote some of the better songs i've ever written and i started figuring out how the fuck i was gonna move to NYC. And MAy 22nd, 2001 i started crashing at a place in W'burg with a friend of a friend. I started playing shows at SideWalk, and i started seeing all the amazing shit here and getting peoples recording and fully understanding that right here are like so many of the most really relevent and honest and good music right now is right here in NYC and i was inamered. I was blessed to be as accepted as i was, to have been given so many oppurtunites, to be surrounded by so much inspiration. For the past five years i've played my acoustic guitar and written my songs and seen them as complete at that, almost oppossed to the idea of further instrumentation. Then i traveled with the Moldy Peaches. I had seen Kimya and Adam acoustically, and then night after night i saw the intensity of their band and it felt so right. The Larval Organs came together very easily/naturally, and some times i wonder if it will fall apart in the sam way, but until then i will keep on playing,and figure out the rest when the time comes. About community, sometimes i feel like our scene is fragmented, and that it's potential is so much greater than is being realized. Diane tells me there is always time; but i wonder. At any rate, we are surrounded by so much beauty. I should let go, so i can see it. All my life i had only a small handful of friends, if that; and now there are so many people that i love. So come now, let's get the fuck out of here, and come now, let's not sell anyone out.
If you got this far, i am amazed. But any way, love, cockroach.
