"fuck..."
I had no idea the door on MF-2 ('Millennium Falcon 2' Socials van name) would swing THAT wide and hit JxJ's 'better car' and scratch it. By nights end JxJ still shrugs it off as he and his wife did earlier... I drop it... What JxJ sez is final "Fuck it. Its just a car" he sez. I offer The Peoples Republic of China as a target for blame and my own guilt. JxJ accepts.
101
Attending the ride to Rakes End: Me (duh!), Julie, JxJ (driving), Olive (more on her later), 'MS' who I will now refer to as Mikey Pipes..."If your gonna stick around, you need a 'punk-name' for my articles!" and AM aka "Man-Terror" aka (from here onward) Aaron Puke. A quick stop at Speedway has Puke amazing us With his skillful execution of their reward points system allowing him a vast accumulation of points approaching six digits. "My retirement plan" he sez. "You ever see PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE? I ask... "No" he responds.
101.1
Rye Garlic chips... those really crunchy motherfuckers in Chex Mix... I got a bag of just those. Really fucking delicious and a great way to build my blood sugar level up for the activity of my day ahead...
101.2
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| Inside Rakes End... Photo from City Beat Magazine |
101.3
Driving around the Brighton Maze the rain begins slacking off. We arrive early.
The Rakes is still not open. I guess I may have had the second day’s event starting time confused... Or I subconsciously always plan fir early arrivals. Mikey Pipes and Puke keep us all laughing while we take to Brighton looking fir a phone booth to place a call. None of us have a cell-phone! Did you know that a phone call cost $.50 now? It does. Here is a few graffiti tags I see: Otek, Rapid, Ruen, Reper, Alpha. Not all of them was actually in Brighton but many were keep up the good work... I like your crime.
101.4
Culturally filled to the brim after using the pay phone the rain subsides and action picks up at Rakes. Reunited with Tom Kat of FOLDED ARMS and the Sweet Patches comps. Meet Adam from ADM... Soon enough were loading gear in, setting up and people slowly trickle in.
101.5
Jerome sets up a spread of food as promised. Puke & Pipes activate the $1 PBR deal. There is a raw power about pulling a $10 bill out and saying while pointing as if choosing your team of kickball on a playground. "Give a 'Winner' to him, him, him, him, him, him...ect.ect.” Today, 'Winners' abound. Rakes End Year 1 Fest and instantly supplies a great feeling to the day.
101.5.1
Robert Inhuman DJ's music. I have a conceptual problem with the use of 'DJ' considering the use of computers and iPods and their relation to the act of DJing and I’m sure Robert has heard it all... A 'Selector' is what I think as a more suitable name but honestly it don’t roll off the tongue as easy as DJ... None the least, at least music is being not only played but also supported by Inhumans efforts.
101.6 Mikey Pipes "Come on! Lets get this show on the road!"
Tom Kat... Known him for years from his pressing business, Involvement in the IWW and even so far back as a guitarist in one of Cincinnati’s few Anarcho-Punk bands, Counterpoise (Beard nods also to End Political Authority, Zombie Terrorist and Praparation H and I also must acknowledge REKT too). He is FOLDED ARMS (FA) who takes the 'stage' first. If there were three of Tom Kat then you would have The Dils. FA bellows the leftist ideologies in every song... Mentions of the dreadful Bangladesh factory collapse is totally within IWW thinking's. He plays songs from the bottom of his blood red heart and practices as he preaches. He plays a song by an early 1900's lefty activist named Joe Hill and I promise to look him up later which I did. So you see, Tom Kat as Folded Arms bring song and resistance to the forefront and still pass along a message... Getting the word out. I seriously was about to become a card carrying Wobblies myself if only The Panther would have also been allowed to join, which he wasn’t due to his work position of being able to fire people. Bummer. There’s a certain honor and appreciation I have for artist like FA... It takes bravery to get up there, by yourself and do your thing. I hope to hear more from Tom Kat/FA and maybe even checking out more of IWW’s aesthetics. AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL. I love leftist rhetoric! Fuck yeah!
103
103.1
"Ehhh..." said Mikey Pipes from his perch at the bar rather loudly serving up his disdain of mediocrity. "You played too long!" said AB1. "I could have stood to hear a couple more songs,” said Aaron Puke. Passionately enough, fuck those guys. The Socials play at you, not for you.
103.1.1
Again, fuck those guys! We [The Socials] control what we do...
103.2
Olive traverses the bar back to front on repeat. Her deer in headlights look was unsuspected but small burst of dance holding her Barbie guitar were cute. Robert Inhumans Mo-hawk captivated her. Lets see if that remains so 10 years from now. I can already see teenage boys pissing their parents off getting mo-hawks because a teen heartthrob Olive tells them to. She is a very persuasive kid.
104
The soon to be extinct (in this line up or form anyway) of Dinosaurs & Thunder (D&T) followed. JB, their bassist could not show... According to Rob, Jon and Dro they plan on doing a climatic Goodbye tour this summer so JB has to watch using those vacation days... This is the truth of real music made by real bands whose members are in their 20's Walking the fragile boundaries of work, family, love interest, bare-knuckle fist fighting, partying and band life. In your 20's you are sore from fucking, drinking or fighting the next day... In your 30's it’s the following day and half the next. In your 40's it’s a two-day recovery. In your 50's... Well, expect a well planned holiday weekend cause there’s no fucking way that your going out on a Friday night, living it up and then on Sunday getting your fucking ass up and go Krogering! Your lucky to be recovered from that Friday drunk come the Tuesday morning alarm clock following the 1st (of 3) 4th of July holidays... Memorial Day or what the fuck ever else it’s called. D&T play a raucous set. Sounded great. Every band plays better when they are on their death ground... A rat becomes a Lion. A lion becomes an A Bomb... Jonathan Stout rocks hard and breaks his amp... Cord snapped off at his amps input. Being about 2/3rds thru with their set Jon calls it. "Well, were done! Thanks everyone" (Jonathan has a particularly strange manner in-person. He rhymes as he talks in normal conversation like the character Roadblock from the 80's GI JOE cartoon series.) Rob Santel and Joshua Bradbury warned me in advance but Dro didn’t. He wanted to see my reaction. But wait, No! Rob and Dro improvise while Jerome, JxJ and others try to find an alternative route... I’m not sure who exactly offered up the Marshall amp, but they ate a hero to me and they totally missed the parade the following Monday with all kinds of cute, flashy, bright shit snaking thru Brighton’s Streets. D&T blaze thru their set with flare, intensity, cite, bright and all kindsa flashy points. It sure is a shame they can’t stick together. I’ve said that before, I will say it again. I’m not sure why I have to point that out either.
104.1
Scribbled notes in my small notebook reveals that the amp may be from the band following D&T that’s called OLD SOUL from Motown, Michigan. They were using the Rakes End sidewalk as a staging area. I have no fucking idea how a van of any size that would still constitute as a van and not a truck could hold so much fucking gear. Rakes sidewalk was like an Old MacDonald had a music store with an van was fulfilling.
104.2
The sidewalks in front of Rakes End could obviously tell many stories but the sidewalk is building even more fro the coming ages. Fastly, Rakes End is moving up in my personal rankings knocking on my Home-Bar choice for the first time in many years.
104.3
It’s (unfortunately) time to go. From the start of the adventure an early egress was part of the plan. Just as I remember sleeping on the ride home from my parents’ activities at The Moose Lodge, Olive succumbs to sleep despite the drama filled elevated banter of Pipes and Puke.
104.5
I find JxJ inside rocking out to Old Soul. "They're fucking great!" Explains Juice.. He is (of course) right. They are rocking the Rakes... "Isis meets The Deftones" Juice explains jamming a satanic hand gesture in the air. 'Rock Horns' of the sort revealing the top of the hand with index and pinky fingers raised. thumb ticked away... Rock Horn. I never thought in a million years I could describe this act without many. many more words...Intense, aggressive and threatening hardcore spazz without being necessarily threatening themselves. There is content of something greater. A purpose… Performing music is like that when you’re opposite of the crowd holding a guitar, singing or sapping a keyboard. You have to show your committed to the efforts. Soldiers in wartime get USO concerts and such to keep their moral up during the lull in battles… performances like Old Soul were releasing are the same. In-between everyone’s private (and sometimes NOT so private) wars, the reasserting to your path is realized. We Are At War… But alas with time to go and after quick apologies to ADM (Adam) and Mardou for missing their sets quick looks on the MF2's clock reveals that this time the golden gates of the suburbs are far from closing. We have ample time to spare for entry.
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| Molly Malones |
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| Cheese Coney (Left) Gravy Fries with Cheese (Right) |
106
The drive back to Fairfield is a good one. Listening to "The Suburbs" by Arcade Fire on high-fidelity compact disc hits well. Despite the rigmarole about them getting a Grammy or whatever for this album, I like it. "Modern Man" is one of the best songs I have ever heard... My suburb accepts me with open arms... "I will NEVER leave you and your perfect asphalt and freshly painted road lines again". Of course this is a lie and I think my suburb knows. Whispered softly in my good ear, my suburb sez "we... are... at... war..." then hugs me tightly for an uncomfortable amount of time.
"... something don’t feel right"
from "Modern Man" by ARCADE FIRE
*thanks Kenny
This article is dedicated to Raul Kennedy, The Last American.