Together Now

 Words by Nips

Fuck.  People better start showin’ up soon.  Ate the tab too early.  Already did my Johnny Thunders makeup.  Shirt with a missing sleeve Dylan tore off.  And the classic shredded denims around my waist.  Even wore a dog collar this time.  Jake better have been serious about gettin’ people to dress up.  Hope he was able to find one of those oversized greeting cards.  Went to three places and couldn’t find one for Brendan.  Even rearended someone in the process.  Some Vietnam vet that didn’t even bother to take the cig outta his mouth while gettin’ my info.  That’s what I need to calm these nerves.  A cig.  Bought a second pouch in case I start chiefin’ ‘em.  That’s how the acid goes.

Take a shot of etizolam.  Half dose.  Don’t wanna kill the trip.  But definitely need to slow it down.  Would’ve been fine if I had waited another hour.  But wanted to peak during Brendan’s last Toeheads set before dippin’ for the Navy in Rhode Island.

Blink and the living room is startin’ to fill with bodies.  Jake’s orange wool hat clashin’ with his costume.  “Brendan isn’t here yet is he?”

“Nah.”

“Cool.  Pass around this poster board.  Have everyone sign a goodbye card for him.  Couldn’t find a real card.  So we’ll fold it in half.  You got any good photos of him?”

Tear the one off the wall.  Stimmed out in the cig room at the end of Summerfest.  Tape it to the center.  Not a bad turn out so far.  For a show thrown together in a couple days.  Luckily Wednesday is my off day at work.  Devil’s Night.  Fifteen minutes after start time.  Hour after load in was supposed to be.  Jake never did clarify what time music was gonna start.  Just asked to use Belmont for the occasion.

“We’re on first right?”  Chuck says from the front door behind me.

“Yeah.  Go ahead up and you can start settin’ up.”

Jake hides the card in the coves upstairs where 208’s gear is already tucked away.  KQ adjusts Jordan’s kit.  While Owen and Ben plug in amps.  Chuck sets a pumpkin on the ground.  “PHARMA” scrawled over the front in Sharpie.  A large pill bottle with the label torn off next to it.  They dip for the front porch for a preshow cig.  Cig room already hotboxed by Dee and everyone at Ham House.  They do this shit everytime.  Just need to step in for a minute.  And the second hand smoke smothers the urge for the cig you just rolled up.

Dylan is on the front porch with a sheet over his head.  Makin’ everyone guess who the ghost is.  Drew and Tina drinkin’ Buzzballs in the kitchen.  X’s on their foreheads.  “They taste like a flat Four Loko.  Not good.  But named appropriately.”  Pop the empties on the shelf in the kitchen with the memorabilia from after parties and other sets here.  Glad people actually wore their costumes.

Everybody’s here and the benzos are makin’ the night extra surreal.  Like this night is somethin’ from a dream we all avoided sleepin’ through.  The King of the Scene arrives.  Different pair than his normal octagon sunglasses over his eyes.  Stroh’s already cracked as he walks in.  Peter’s upstairs testin’ the projector setup.  His hazy visuals on the ceiling and the Peanuts sheets on my mattress propped against the wall.  Time to uncork the liter and a half wine bottle.

The feedback whistles from Owen’s cranked amp upstairs.  Whistlin’ everyone into the dark bedroom.  The neighbors only complain about the noise when the hardcore bands play.  So tonight might not be their favorite show.  But after this Belmont is closin’ for the season.  Gotta clean the bathtub for my landlord’s property inspection next month.  Can’t believe I’ve been here for two years now.  And averaged a show a month this past year.  Couldn’t pick a better closin’ ceremony the King’s departure.

The crowd stands anxiously against the wall as Pharma plows through their first song.  Chuck pacin’ around the room with mic in hand.  Scoops the pumpkin from the ground as KQ beats the sticks together.  One two three.  And on the fourth the orange splinters on the blue carpet.  Tyriq shoves Joey mid kick as Chuck’s screams clip the speaker.  Everyone’s flesh collides.  Oozes against each other before slidin’ off the sweat.  No amount of AC or open windows able to stop the humidity of body friction.  Bones crack and disintegrate to the marrow of our lives.  Rail the line and jump in.  Bottle in hand.  Joey’s skull makin’ contact with the base.  Spewin’ a geyser onto the wall from the palm of my hand.

The red wine paints streaks on the white drywall that still stands defiantly against our chaos.  Drops run down at a fraction the speed of Owen’s blurred hand makin’ the strings wail.  And in ten minutes, the masochistic treatment of our eardrums unfortunately ends.  Light flicks on.  Showin’ a mess of pumpkin guts.  Seeds.  And capsules of an unknown drug woven into the carpet by our feet.  When did that shit burst?  “Nips, you want me to clean this up at the end of the night?”  Chuck pants.  Red in the face.

“Nah man.  It really ties the bedroom together.”

He smiles as Kyle drags his amp from the cove for their set.  Shelby adjusting the kit.  Walks away as Jake towers into the room.  Emptyin’ a Stroh’s into himself.  “Thanks for askin’ us to play Jake.  Super stoked to get to play a show with Toeheads.”

“Man.  Thanks for comin’ here from Florida.”

“Well thanks for acceptin’ us into this.  We didn’t know anybody here when we moved out here.  But you all made us feel so welcomed into this family.”

Gotta get a cig in before this set.  Once 208 starts you’re gribbed in.  As tight as the stranglehold Kyle has on the neck of his guitar.  The reverb slaps back with the thud of Shelby’s drums.  Bouncin’ you from wall to wall.  Body to body.  Drowns out the thoughts reverberatin’ off the walls of your skull.

He’s gotta have the shoes off every show.  Release the hounds!  Let the brutalization of instruments begin.  The things we do for tone.  He mumbles almost incoherently into the mic behind shags of hair.  “This next one’s ‘Hotel California.’”  Shelby’s tom thumps in the background as Peter’s lights pulse on the walls.  Kyle droppin’ to the floor.  Body twitchin’ with each crunch of distortion he bends outta the amp.  Until it gives out.  Forcing a finale from the duo.

“I forgot the tambourine!”  Drew yells to Joey.

“Fuck.  Should we run down the street to grab it.”

“I got bongos.”  Pass ‘em to Drew while the three Toeheads debate their setlist.  Gonna play the full EP that drops at midnight.  Cassettes from Remove Records comin’ soon.

Grab a beer from the fridge.  Drew standin’ in the kitchen.  Joint tucked between lips.  Greasy hair falls on the shoulders of his bright shirt.  Tappin’ the bongos surrounded by women with X’s on their foreheads.  “That’s gotta be the most cult leader lookin’ thing I’ve seen in my life.”  Joey passes by.  Tosses a beer can in the sink.  And grabs a plate to set upstairs.

The ceiling and wall covered in shots of the trio performing on the front porch.  The same front porch I first spotted Brendan and Jake from at the first show I threw a year ago.  Just two goons sittin’ in a red Dodge.  Drinkin’ Labatt.  Heavy.  And the one hidin’ behind octagon shades tells me about this tape label he started.  Remove Records.  “King of the Scene!”  Drew yells perched on the head on top of Joey’s 2x12.  Jake cuts his goodbye speech off early.  Don’t wanna get too heavy before the heavy music.

The chords crunch under his fingertips.  The brass crashes under Brendan’s sticks.  Joey gettin’ some futuristic fuzz from the bass.  This is the future of garage.  Happenin’ right before my dilated pupils.  The noise ceases as Jake’s mumbled first line grows into a scream.  Then pounds faster.  Harder.  Sloppier.  How can Peter’s camera even handle this noise?  “With a knife!”

Standin’ by the stairs the group begins a cover of “Anna (Go to Him.)”  The crowd dances with each other.  Belts the chorus in unison as the peak takes my brain into this dream.  Everybody gathered in this sweaty bedroom.  Vibin’ together.  What more could you dream of?  One last night for all of us to be together.  Together right here.  Right now.  Hidin’ the makeup streakin’ under my eyes in the cig room from Rae and Kyle from the Waterheads.

The group ends the onslaught of feedback.  Screeches.  Of both instruments and vocal cords.  Reverb.  Thuds and crashes.  Hi-hats through the wall.  And every jarring sound your ears dream of bein’ berated by.  Joey trades the bass for a second guitar.  Yells for a pick.  While Jake begs for some noise to stop him from continuin’ a corny speech.  It is Devil’s Night after all.  Brendan trades his sunglasses for the pair of octagons in his leather jacket while takin’ a bow.

“Burn down Midtown!”  From Drew.

“Has anyone seen my wallet?!”  From Dee.

“It’s not fuckin’ workin’!”  From Joey who can’t rail a line through the humidity.  Gives it up before his ode to DMT and a rambunctious cover of “Blew My Mind” to close the set.

“Don’t we have a bunch more?”  Joey yells across the room.

“Well some of us working class folk have a job to go to in the morning.”  Evan jokes.

“Alright.  We’ll do an encore for Brendan’s last ride.”  Jake plugs back in.  Drew stands in the center of the room.  Pulls back up the bongos in sweaty, red hands.  “This one’s called ‘Demon House.’

“I’ve been livin’ in a demon house!”  None of the notes are distinguishable in the final barrage of sound.  But the bodies crash into each other.  For one last connection to the King that gave everybody somethin’ to show their parents.  I can still hear him behind the bottle of Stroh’s at Painted Lady before we bootlegged the Milk Bath gig at Outer Limits.  “Just somethin’ to say ‘you guys might not be into this.  But somebody out there thinks it means somethin’.’”

As the party filters out, Jordan video calls me on Snapchat to say goodbye to Brendan before he sets sail.  Says the broken hi-hat stand was the least he could offer in return to the King of the Scene.  Joey spills the bottle of wine next to me.  Looks up from rollin’ around on the floor.  “That’s the difference between me and Jay Retard.  I know when not to break shit.”  The words fill the holes the acid burns into my brain as he dips to prep Ham House for the after party.  Leavin’ his shoes behind.  The picture of me and him in his underwear will surface in a few days but doesn’t help fill the gaps in the night.

Sittin’ next to me, Brendan dents a Stroh’s can in his hand.  Hood over his head.  But no octagons to hide the tears in his eyes.  “It’s just…  For the first time…  I feel like I finally got a family.  And now that I have that feeling.  I gotta leave my home behind.  Over a mistake I enlisted in months ago.”  He sniffles and kills the can.  Somethin’ about the way that last drop of beer hits makes you puke it all up.  “And I don’t know how long until I’ll be able to get back to that feeling.”

“But that’s the beauty of it.”  Take a swig from the remains of the wine bottle.  “No matter what happens now.  You got the security of family.  We’re all still gonna be here.  And whenever you get back, the empty space you left will still be here for you.  Ya know now no matter what you always got a family somewhere.  Forever.  Maybe the scene ends.  Maybe Joey moves somewhere like New Mexico or some shit.  Maybe I finally clean the bathtub like my landlord and Jake keep askin’.  But no matter where any of us are or what’s different.  You’ll always be able to show up and have people and a place where you belong.  No matter where we are we’re all together now.”

One by one people nod to sleep at Ham House.  People find their way back to their beds.  And don’t have to dream about a home.  Cause they got a place to be free.  Like Manson sang about.  Brendan hugs me goodbye.  And I find my way to the after hours where my friend Josh asks sincerely if I’m doin’ alright tonight.  Cause he knows it’s not just the acid and benzos makin’ everything feel surreal.  But at least when I get home.  There’s a pair of octagon glasses in the explosion of pumpkin seeds and prescription strength anti-inflammatories.  I’ll end up losing ‘em in a few months.  Life’s cruel that way.  Even all the shit that means somethin’ to us will pass.  But at least we got it together now.

Psychedelic Vomit #1

Words by Nips

 *zniffff*  “I always thought introductions were overrated.”  Pinch the bridge of my nose as I lift my head from the dirty mirror.  Jostle my nostrils between my chipped paint on cracked fingernails.  The ash falling from my half-burnt Camel.  “It always seemed more real gettin’ to know somebody through observation.  Just bein’ there.  Ya know?”  The mass of half working guitar pedals blocking the gunked up view of myself in the mirror.  Recycled mass of vomit culture drippin’ in bell bottoms and Hawaiian shirts.  I never really asked Ig Byrd Brother and the Sweetheart of the Rodeo about themselves.  Just knew they moved up here from Florida.  But knew by the fuzz they reverberated in my bedroom during shows, they knew what I mean when I said this.

See.  I had worked myself into this delusion my senior year of high school, I had to write the next great American semi-autobiographical existential crisis.  I’ve written anthologies of half-baked drafts of this.  Whether they be spoken into a tape recorder in my living room.  Or scrawled on a pad of Tops rolling papers.  But never got more of an inkling of characters.  Characters facing this same dead end cliff hanger I’ve had waking nightmares of.  And maybe because I never took the time to get to know them.  Ask them about themselves.

But Keourac did that shit.  I figured it would only be a matter of time before one of us figured out how to write it down.  He saw what was happening before his very own glossy, bloodshot eyes.  He was able to scribble that feeling into the margins of a fuckin’ scroll.  And that was somebody’s kid.  As much they didn’t want it to be.  It could be anyone of us that immortalized this brief splice of life, exposose of space and time and the whole damn continuum.  Somebody just needed to be there to document it.

So that’s what I set out to do.  Document this shit.  Document the trees growing through the brick of mildew drenched basements we go into for the sake of tone.  Ballsy enough to walk up to an insect and smash it with our bare hands.  Document the struggles of rolling a piano down a pothole filled alley.  Document the rides home from a friend when we trip down the Lynchian rabbit holes of our psyches.  This is what we fuck up our sleep schedules for!  Cause all the pieces were there to jigsaw it back together.  The vague glimpses of beauty in each other's humanity.

Maybe I just never had the free time to sit at length with myself.  Just exist with myself.  And come to terms with the cliffhanger at the end of my own road.  Maybe it was just my own fear keeping me from doing it.  But maybe I just never got to know the character’s enough.  Never took the time to ask them about themselves.  And get to know them beyond the vague glimpse of beauty I saw in all their humanity.  How do you write a character’s ending when you haven’t even gotten to know them yet?  Or if they’ve even gotten to know themselves.  How do you write the ending when the story is still happening before your very own glossy, black hole pupils?

At the end of the day.  We’d all prefer not knowing the ending instead of being let down by the sudden cliffhanger at the dead-end of the road.

How well can you really get to know someone when you only get the perspective from your window and not their eye view?

“I’m just merely observing.”  Baby Audobahn the Mad Organ Grinder says this setting down a glass of home brewed yerba.  Sparking a joint behind his synth dungeon.  The son of the professor that got me looking at the world through a different camera.  (And that joke only lands if you knew he was my film teacher. Because you don’t really know me yet.)  “I don’t know the answers.  I’m just observing.  Just like you are.”  The last of the scene not to be crippled by nicotine addiction.

Him and his roommate got me listenin’ to a lotta Neil Young records.  “Everybody knows this is nowhere...”  Neil’s voice warbles in my head as we smoke DMT on the beach.  Trespassing under a boardwalk with a smiley face painted on it.  During the pandemic of 2020.  The whole world currently on lockdown.  But we’ve been frozen at the border of nowhere and infinity for a while now.

We’re rippin’ molded wood from the roots of concrete trees to build our own isolation booth.  Lightnin’ bugs in the house, our only light to the outside world.  A room to be alone with the sounds and screams we make into the void.  Hoping someone replies.  Or there’s at least a slight echo.  That we aren’t the only ones observing we’re trapped.  No matter how many brilliant ideas we attempt to make this absurdity mean something.  Anything!  We don’t need an answer.  Just the observation there’s another isolation booth screaming in the void too.

“I don’t wanna know the answer to that…” the Guilty Undertaker ashes into the piano from 1943 while taping the entire experience on a Fostex.  A contraption I still wish was more than just a robot to me.  Anything made before 1990 was meant to double as an ashtray.  “Ignorance is bliss, yeah I like where I’m at.”  They sing this song behind a new pair of sunglasses after shattering the old lens with a drunken foot.  Shoelaces tied back together.  And hearing this vocal track is comforting.  It’s reassuring.

It doesn’t matter if anyone else ever hears that reel.  It doesn’t matter if it was documented or not.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a scroll of amphetamine folklore we taught ourselves.  A 4chan urban legend.  Or anything else.  It doesn’t matter if the cliffhanger is the end of the story.  Or if “On the Way There” is it’s own destination.  It doesn’t matter if we can even get the answers.  At least we know we’re not alone.  And there’s a couch to crash on nearby in case a closed bedroom starts to feel like an isolation chamber.  Freezing us in a moment of just merely existing.

We might all just be characters in our own semi-autobiographical existential crisis.  Inconsistent.  Incomplete.  Our own gunked up reflection in somebody else's dirty mirror.  But through the coke and fuzz pedals.  Seeing fractal trace visuals of our own beautifully fragmented glimpse of humanity.  The validation isn’t that somebody else reads our novel.  Hears our screams.  Or sees our mirror.  Just that they too, like us, are trapped in their own lens of unassuredness.  After all, it’s not our fault some fish decided to step outta water and now we’re all just vague inklings of characters to some nervous breakdown.  Struggling to pay rent and make sense of it all.  At the same damn time!  We’re all just waiting for Ashton Kutcher to wholesomely flashback us to the 2000s and yell “punk’d!” on the cruel prank of existence.

“I don’t know.”  *znifff*  “I think that’s all I’m tryin’ to say.  Or at least all I’ve ever wanted to try to say.”  Pinch the bridge of the nose.  Jostle the nostrils in the cracked paint on cracked fingernails.  “Maybe I’m just trippin’ too hard.”

Interview with Connie Voltaire

 Hello friends, I am Dee Putman. In the modern era of punk rock YouTube channels such as Anti (formerly known as Jimmy), Turn on The Tube, Harakiri Diat, No Deal, etc, one artist that has especially stood out among the rest is Minneapolis’s Connie Voltaire (Neo Neos, QQQL, Vedicardi, etc etc). Connie is the clown prince of punk. He has a large and infectious discography and if history is kind I think he will be regarded as one of punk’s most talented songwriters/musicians. It was a pleasure speaking with him. 

Read on. 

How’d you get started in music? Who were your initial inspirations?

I got started after playing Guitar Hero 2 which introduced me to rock music.  Up until that point the only music I listened to was math rock/post-rock, video game music, and Weird Al. That stuff still sticks with me.  In terms of inspirations to play it depends on what you're referring to. Each project I do has roots in different places.

You have a rather large discography. What’s your writing & recording process? How do you manage to be so prolific? 

When it comes to bands like QQQL I'm bringing riffs and then working those into songs with my bandmates.  All of my solo projects with a few exceptions are done by recording myself playing drums (I'll think of a drum pattern or two on the spot and just play them) and then write a song over the top of that drum recording. Typically my drum tracks are one take so if you hear a mistake or something weird or a sudden tempo change it's because that's what I felt like doing or I just messed up.  I don't start recording with any plans, I just make the drum ideas up on the spot.  The Cells release "First Second," for example, took me about 30 minutes to "write" and record the drum parts in one session.  Lyrics come last.  Usually I'll write guitar parts before bass parts besides for some Neo Neos tracks.  I'm only "prolific" because I have nothing better to do with my time and I love the attention releasing music gets me!

You have openly expressed your disdain for drum machines. What is it about them that rubs you the wrong way? 

The lack of human element really bores me. There are people that do it well (Dummy for example has very creative drum machine patterns that keep things interesting) but I find it hard to get into when it sounds like someone just hit the first pattern on a Casio and figured that was good enough. Part of it just feels lazy to me, where's the passion in that? But it works for some people so whatever. I just like to complain because often I feel like the actual melodic elements of these songs are pretty good but there's no rhythm there. It's like eating chips with no DIP!  Where's the DIP?

Who are some of the most important punk bands right now?

I'd probably have said Toyota but that's dead in the water as far as I'm aware. I really was into Bogus Genius but their live band was last the last I saw of it. It might have to be Gee Tee and Satanic Togas. That being said, I'm not sure how you define important. Is it a band that is well known and is pushing the boundaries a bit or a band very few people know that is something completely new?  Also check out Blacker Face from Chicago.  To be honest, I'm not all that exposed to new music, I'm not sure where you people find new stuff.  Now that there aren't really shows I don't know where to see it, and even then Minneapolis hasn't had an interesting new band since what, 2014? I mean Citric Dummies are awesome but I don't think they're reaching for originality. There was that band Wild Combo, don't know what happened to them.

 What was with that Mark Winter diss track? Did you have actual beef with Mark or was it just a goof?

 Yeah he killed my dog to impress that guy from Cro-Mags. Also RIP to Terry Katzman.