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All Things to All People Vol. 5
Well, this blog is (at least) a day late because of all of the madness surrounding Black Friday. I'm pretty sure that the rest of the world thinks that Americans are completely insane, and I'm sure there are also plenty of punks out there who think that punk labels, distros, and stores that participate in it are ethically suspect, or at least have their priorities seriously out of whack. I definitely understand that perspective, but I also have a responsibility to myself and my employees to take advantage of the opportunity that Black Friday presents. Consumer psychology is a weird thing... I wish that it didn't exist and that people made all of their spending choices completely rationally, but that isn't the world we live in. The fact is that, for whatever reason, people's wallets are more open at this time of year, and the significant uptick in sales that we experience during the holidays goes a long way toward making up for the money we lose throughout the rest of the year. As I stated way back in Vol. 1 of this blog, Sorry State is not a money-making enterprise, but I'd really like it if it didn't lose so much of my money. Having Sorry State sustain itself at at least the break-even point would significantly reduce my stress level, alleviate much of the potential for burnout that I run the risk of every day, and allow me to contribute even more to the health of both the North Carolina and national/international punk scenes. If that makes me occasionally come off a bit like a scummy capitalist, then I guess that's something I've grown comfortable dealing with.
That line of thought makes me think of another issue I want to address: advertising in corporate / mainstream media. I remember the first time I experimented with running a Facebook ad. The telltale "sponsored" notice appeared at the top of my post and someone replied saying "sponsored post... gross." That really made me question myself and I didn't run ads on Facebook or other non-punk media for a long time. However, once the store opened and I started trying to reach people outside the punk scene I realized that Facebook was probably my best opportunity for advertising. Particularly this past weekend I've begun to notice lots of other punk labels and distros following suit. While I feel guilty every time Zuckerberg & co. suck money out of the Sorry State bank account, the fact is that Facebook advertising is so effective because punks look at Facebook. I think that Facebook basically sucks, but it's kind of a necessary feature of life in the internet age. I wish the punk scene didn't use social media as its primary means of communication, but unfortunately it does. I still advertise in zines like Maximumrocknroll and Razorcake, but I'm skeptical about how effective these ads really are. Instead, I think of them more as donations to institutions that I want to support.
In a way, the existence of this blog is a stab against punks' (and, indeed, my/Sorry State's) over-reliance on social media. It was born out of an impulse to do something that is mine, and mine alone. I don't have the time, energy, or expertise to effectively distribute a paper publication, but ideally this blog should do something similar by allowing me to write in a forum that isn't shaped by all of the oppressive contexts of social media or even the conventional blogosphere.
By the way, if you're wondering how our Black Friday went, I'd say it went pretty darn well. There were a few titles I ordered that flopped... why I ordered copies of the Goo Goo Dolls' A Boy Named Goo is beyond me (maybe because there's been so much talk about the band on Viva La Vinyl?), but I'm honestly shocked that the double LP of Zombies BBC sessions didn't sell better. We consistently sell new and used copies of Odyssey and Oracle, and a well-packaged, professionally sourced collection of vintage BBC sessions seemed like a no-brainer, but not a lot of people pulled the trigger. You can't win 'em all, I suppose.
For the past few days I've been reading the book Loitering: Collected Essays by Charles D'Ambrosio. It's really been knocking my socks off. Over the past few years I've discovered a passion for reading essays that doesn't show any signs of abating. I think that one of the thing that has made me so eager to read is the joy of discovery... there's so much stuff out there that I haven't come across. Despite having a PhD in literature I'm virtually ignorant of contemporary literature, so I end up getting book recommendations from a mish-mash of sources... articles in magazines like the Atlantic, things friends mention on social media, and even algorithmically generated recommendations like Amazon's related product feature or Goodreads' recommendations. I think that the latter is how I discovered D'Ambrosio, and reading the brilliant introductory essay to this collection gives me a similar sort of thrill as when I hear an exciting record that I've never heard before.
Thinking about my developing passion for the contemporary essay reminds me of a conversation I had late one night with a couple of touring bands who were staying at my house. Someone was asking about all of the descriptions I write for the web site... "do you really like all of the records you write descriptions for?" is probably the most common question I get about Sorry State. My stock answer is that my method when writing descriptions is to try to match the record up with the people who would enjoy that record the most. This requires a kind of psychological transformation wherein I try to get myself in the frame of mind of the person who truly loves this record. If I'm listening to the new release on Beach Impediment or Warthog Speak that requires me to become, in some sense, a perpetually angry, hard-moshing, finger-pointing hardcore kid that I might have been ten or fifteen years ago, but am not anymore. Similarly, when I listen to some new genre-bending experimental release I try to become the person who values originality above all else, who craves the new and the novel. I've become really adept at switching between these different modes, but it's a dangerous game... sometimes I feel like I can't remember what it is that I really love.
Anyway, what I'm getting at here is that one of the beautiful things about art is that is allows you to inhabit, to some degree or another, another person's subjectivity... to see the world through their eyes, to hear through their ears, to notice the things they notice, and to temporarily try on their assumptions, biases, priorities, preferences, and/or grievances as if they were a different set of clothes. The well-written personal essay sparks this process with a depth, intensity, and subtlety that I find endlessly gratifying.
I'll wrap things up with a note about music. I realized after I published my last entry that I'd actually written about Voivod in two consecutive updates. Ooops! In an effort to change gears, I'll talk about one of my other big musical obsessions of this past summer: Bloodbrothers by the Dictators. It's weird how an album that you've heard numerous times in your life can hit you all of a sudden with a completely different kind of impact, and that's exactly what happened with this record. A totally beat-to-shit used copy came in the store and I spun it one day and was just blown away. I've owned this record two or three times in my life, and somehow it always ended up in the sell pile. However, since my obsession with this record blossomed it's hard for me to figure out how I ever could have heard the song above (or, indeed, any of the half dozen other stone cold bangers on this disc) and not acknowledged it as one of the most perfect songs of all time. My only working theory is that the opening track on the record, "Faster and Louder," is kind of a dud... it's not a terrible song, but the hooks don't deliver the same deep gut punch as the stronger tracks like "Baby Let's Twist" and "The Minnesota Strip." Anyway, enjoy the track above... god knows I do.
All Things to All People Vol. 4
HOLY SHIT THERE IS A NEW CAREER SUICIDE SONG! That one really came out of nowhere, and what's even cooler is that it's awesome (not that I expected anything less). Jonah is back on the drums, so it sounds like the earlier stuff since, if I remember correctly, Jonah ended up playing drums on a lot of those recordings anyway. It's hard to convey what an important band Career Suicide were to me in the early 00s. Along with Direct Control, they seem to have been almost wholly responsible for resurrecting true early 80s style hardcore, and I know they preceded DC by quite some time as I vividly remember talking about CS at length the first time I hung out with the Direct Control crew. Anyway, timeless band... can't wait to hear the whole album!
New CCTV song as well! I know nothing about where this came from or what it's intended for... I just happened to come across it on youtube. I have to say I remain 100% into the NWI stuff... I worry that at some point it's totally going to jump the shark and not be cool anymore, but I think we have a ways to go until that happens. In the meantime I'm going to eagerly gobble up everything this scene has to offer.
So I just heard the news that GISM is going to be playing a reunion show in the UK. At first hearing it, this seemed like pretty incredible news. I mean, I love GISM as much as the next guy, and their first two records in particular are some of the most singular and endlessly fascinating objects (both musically and graphically) in the history of punk. However, after about 5 seconds of reflection I realized that I just do not give a fuck about reunion bands anymore. Poison Idea are also playing in Richmond (about 3 hours away from me) next year, and I'm not even if sure if I'll go to that. I remember thinking about driving up to CBGB to see Poison Idea the last time they came out east and I decided not to do it... I have no idea how that show was, but I'm sure I would have thought it was awesome regardless. This time, I feel like the best-case scenario is a competent band playing a well-rehearsed, well-selected set list. And honestly, who cares? Anything that was interesting about Poison Idea or GISM is long gone, and I'd much rather spend my time going to see a band that is making good music right now. Honestly, I'd way rather see a bunch of friends put together a Poison Idea or a GISM cover band as at least then I'd (hopefully) be at a DIY punk show that I actually felt like being at.
Speaking of DIY punk shows, THERE ARE BASICALLY NONE IN RALEIGH RIGHT NOW AND IT SUCKS! My friends and I speculate endlessly about the reasons for this. The dominant theory is that there were a few years where people got lazy about booking all ages gigs and instead just had 18+ and 21+ shows in bars, so there's a whole generation of younger kids who didn't discover the scene, and hence didn't move into shithole houses where they want to have shows. I'm not sure if that's all 100% accurate... maybe it's just that "the kids" find it more gratifying to post on social media and play video games or whatever it is that teenagers do these days rather than listen to punk and participate in the punk scene. And, really, what does the punk scene have to offer them? When I discovered punk it was a way of owning my misfit status, of signaling to the world that I wanted something more than what it seemed on the surface to offer. Nowadays there are probably more efficient ways to accomplish the same social goal without all of the historical, political, and cultural drama of punk. But then again I'm old and terribly out of touch with the kids, so there's a perfectly good chance that I'm extremely off base.
I've never been one to post about my "scores" on message boards, but I do like writing about my scores, so maybe this blog is a good place to collect those thoughts? The pic above is a few things that I have acquired for myself lately. The Zounds and Headcleaners records were just things that I came across semi-cheap online... longtime favorites that it's nice to finally own on vinyl. The other two are things I was kind of chasing after.
Voivod has become something of a big band for me over the past couple of months. I've always liked them, but the older I get the more I find myself listening to metal. I was on a pretty heavy Hellhammer / Celtic Frost binge in the spring and summer, and around this time Voivod really started catching my ear as well. I think that I've owned all of their LPs up to Nothingface at some point or another (some of them multiple times) but always ended up selling them because they never really clicked with me. However, all of a sudden Killing Technology was the only record I wanted to hear (and thankfully an original copy came in to the store this summer and I managed to snag it), and now that I've kind of worn that out Dimension Hatross is sounding even better to me. Really, it's kind of weird that Voivod are even classified as a metal band. Aside from their haircuts and clothing, their songs are short and economical as many hardcore bands, and they've never been shy about acknowledging their big debt to early Die Kreuzen. Anyway, I was stoked to grab a copy of this for a decent price after poking around online looking for one for a couple of months.
The other big score for me is that Human Sufferage 12". This band was from Columbus, Ohio, and they have been something of an enigma for me for a long time. I think that Mike from Direct Control played me this LP 8 or 10 years ago. I remember a beer-soaked night hanging out with him and Musty when Mike told me that this 12" was the only record he had ever bought online in his life. I remember that it ripped, but pretty much everything rips when you're partying, right? Anyway, I always kept an eye out for Human Sufferage's stuff, and a few years ago I happened upon a sealed copy of their 2nd LP, Thank You, Mother Dear at Goner Records in Memphis and immediately snatched it up. (That record is available on youtube here.) Mother Dear is pretty good, but I knew this first 12" was the one I wanted, and the fact that I never even came across mp3s or a youtube video of it made me itch to hear it all the more. Once it finally arrived I was treated to some solid, punky, early 80s USHC that's pretty much just the way I like it. For some reason they remind me a lot of that old California band Anti, or maybe even Sex Drive-era Necros. It's basically sped-up punk... or maybe what came just after that, i.e. bands that were dyed-in-the-wool hardcore bands, but still had a lot of influence from punkier bands like the Angry Samoans. Anyway, it's not the best record of all time or anything, but I've been spinning it constantly, and it's nice to listen to something that's so out of the echo chamber of the internet.
OK, since this is already a day late I'll leave this version here. Lots to do this week grading papers for my teaching job and preparing for Black Friday weekend at the store!
All Things to All People Vol. 3
This past week I gave a little lecture / Q&A for an Intro to the Music Industry course at NC State, the college where I teach. I'd actually done this before; I met the professor because Jeff took the class last semester (not that I think Jeff wants to be part of the "music industry" as such, but hey, you gotta take something, right?), and when he heard Jeff worked at a record store he asked me to come speak. It's a weird thing to do, for a number of reasons. First of all, to say that I'm involved in the "music industry" is pretty laughable. I don't make any portion of my income off of music, I have no connections to people who are in the "music industry," and my pathway to where I actually am is so idiosyncratic that I doubt anyone could learn anything useful from it. I decided to structure my talk around the changing place of physical media in the music industry, so I brought a bunch of Sorry State releases to show to the class and talk about how our approaches to packaging and the way we think about physical media have changed in general since we started. When I gave the talk to Jeff's class it went pretty well, but the talk I gave the other day was pretty wretched. The students clearly didn't give a shit and a couple of them were clearly struggling to stay awake.
Anyway, the topic is interesting to me, probably because rather than actually being a part of the music industry what I am in reality is a hobbyist who has turned the corner into a full-on obsessive. I was telling the students that the word "media" is almost a misnomer nowadays. A medium is an agency or means of doing something; in the case of records, they are a means of playing recorded music. However, with relatively few exceptions people don't really use records as a means of playing music anymore. Instead, records are this weird fetish object... a symbol that stands for something they aren't, whether that's status, fandom, a relationship to a band or a lost childhood... who knows. The point is that few people are buying records because it's the best way to hear the music they want to hear. This makes the record seller's job very difficult, because rather than selling music, what we're selling is whatever it is that generates the record's symbolic value to the person who buys it. That's very difficult to figure out, because it's different for every person and even changes over time. I've often thought that if I worked as hard as I do selling records but sold something else like hardware or plumbing supplies or caskets or fucking vape juice or anything but records I'd probably be a millionaire.
This morning I watched this really cool 1978 documentary about Magazine and the Buzzcocks. I'm sure this documentary is old news to most of you, but I've never really been one for YouTube (I just don't have time for it, really) so I've only just now come across it. Unlike a lot of rips of TV programs this old, this one is top-notch quality, and also captures two of my absolute favorite bands of all time at their absolute peak. A particular highlight is at the end of the documentary where the original Buzzcocks lineup reunites to play "I Can't Control Myself." Being that these two bands are two of my favorites, I've often wondered what would have happened if Devoto had never left the Buzzcocks. The question is particularly interesting as this documentary really highlights the "two sides of the coin" relationship that Pete Shelley and Devoto seem to have. Imagining a band that combined the intellectual heft of Magazine's first three albums with the razor-sharp pop sensibilities of the early Buzzcocks singles is almost too much for me to even contemplate... if such a band had existed, surely they would have inspired world peace a la the ending of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, right?
I've been listening to a lot of Voivod lately. I don't really have anything interesting to say about Voivod other than that they are really, really good, particularly Killing Technology and Dimension Hatross. I've loved Killing Technology for years, but I never really spent much time with Hatross. I just picked up an original, copy, though, and I'm remedying that situation post-haste.
And since Voivod always makes me think of Die Kreuzen, I'll post the above video as well. If you've never watched this before, stop what you're doing and devote your undivided attention to this video right now. These 13 minutes may actually be the peak moment of the entire history of human culture on the planet earth. These men are gods. If anyone wants to start a religion based on early Die Kreuzen HMU.
Sorry this is kind of a short one, but I'll have to end there. My brain is fried this week from too much work, too many record descriptions, and not enough real excitement. Now, I'm off to see Priests and Shopping in Durham... should be a good one!
All Things to All People Vol. 2
I just found out that I will be teaching at 8AM again next semester. I'm pretty upset about it. In my last post I talked a little bit about Sorry State's monetary philosophy. Since I have never taken money from Sorry State, that means that I have to work a full job in addition to running the store, distro, etc. Lately it has become extremely difficult to balance these things. This fall my teaching schedule puts me on campus about 30 hours per week. I could probably deal with that, but I also teach at 8AM, which means that I have to wake up around 6AM, which means that I need to go to bed at like 10PM if I want to get a full night's rest (which, I assure you, becomes more and more important the older you get). Needless to say, that bedtime is not really conducive to the rock and roll lifestyle that I would like to lead, and I've had to miss a ton of great shows this fall because of it. Thankfully my on-campus time will be reduced next semester, but I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to keep waking up before dawn several days per week.
One day I would really love to quit my job and focus full-time on Sorry State, but I have no idea if that will ever be in the cards. I think the main reason I'd like to quit my job is not so much so that I could be a full-time punk (even though that would rule) or certainly not because I think punk owes me a living, but rather because there's so much more that I know that I could do if I had the time and/or the money. Lately I feel like I've really been pushing against the physical limits of how much one person can work, and not only does it suck being exhausted all the time, but more importantly I feel like I'm not doing as well as I could be doing. The store could have more cool records, there could be more cool shows in Raleigh... there's so much more that could be happening if I weren't chained to a desk for such a large portion of my waking hours. But that's life under capitalism, right?
Wriggle photo by Will Butler / Fastcore Photos
The first really good recent band I recall seeing from Greensboro was Holder's Scar. I mentioned this when I talked about their debut EP on To Live a Lie, but I actually avoided checking them out for a while thanks to their kind of tough-sounding name and the fact that they were from Greensboro. When I finally did listen I was pretty blown away by their complex, heavy, and dissonant hardcore. Holder's Scar are great and well worth checking out, but to me they seem almost like a transitional band, with the key members working through their influences and perhaps not quite having found the exact scene that they truly connected with.
Things really started popping off with the next two Greensboro bands I saw, Wriggle and Bad Eric. Whereas Holder's Scar is heavy hardcore with some metal still in the mix (think Neurosis, Rorschach, and that kind of thing but with extra d-beat influences), Wriggle and Bad Eric are pure hardcore bands. Wriggle are nasty and chaotic, with something of the unhinged quality of early Black Flag and prime-era Void, and when you combine that with a distinctly North Carolinian sensibility you get something that reminds me quite a bit of Eye for an Eye-era Corrosion of Conformity. I liked Wriggle's demo tape so much that I did a short run of them on Sorry State, though they're now sold out. I can't wait to hear what's next for them as well, as they played a bunch of new songs on Tuesday that were a touch more melodic and had more interesting guitar/bass interplay inspired by anarcho-punk like Zounds. As for Bad Eric, they're the brainchild of Eric Chubb (who is in all four of the Greensboro bands I'm writing about), and you might have run across them already as they've toured the most out of this group. Like Wriggle, Bad Eric is pure hardcore, but a bit tighter and more straightforward. While the vocals are much tougher, musically they remind me a lot of Direct Control as their riffs tend to be built around similar chord patterns and their songs around similar dynamics and tempo changes.
The latest band to emerge from this group is Menthol, and they're my favorite of the bunch. While Menthol consists of pretty much the same personnel as the aforementioned bands, from what I hear this is guitarist Tyler's brainchild. It makes sense that Menthol would be my favorite because they're definitely the weirdest band of the crew. While they're still hardcore/punk, I think that Menthol reflects the members' increasing connections with the national / global punk scene, in particular midwest bands like Coneheads, Ooze, Bug, and Lumpy & the Dumpers. If Holder's Scar feels like a band still finding their place, Menthol sounds like a band who knows where they fit in the global punk community and realizes precisely what they have to offer to that conversation and culture. They made a few copies of the above recording on cassette for this week's dates, but the plan is to repress some copies on Sorry State so that more people can own this ripper on a physical format.
So, that's a quick little primer on the Greensboro, North Carolina hardcore scene. I'm sure there are probably some errors in there, but I don't know these folks super well... I'm just a particularly interested outside observer. However, it's scenes like this that make me excited about punk, and if you like being excited about punk you should check these bands out.
Speaking of being excited, that's not a feeling that I've had much of lately. In particular, I've been feeling really awkward and isolated when I try to talk to people at shows. I am overworked, exhausted, over-committed, and stressed nearly to the breaking point. All I can seem to think about is work, whether it's my teaching job or trying to run Sorry State, and when I talk to people lately I feel like I'm either complaining/whining or punishing them about the minutiae of all of my various commitments. I feel like I'm just not a fun or interesting person to be around because I don't have the time to do interesting things or even think interesting thoughts... I'm just a task-completing machine. Mostly I have just been trying to avoid actually talking to people, because all I can think about is how jealous I am of their lives. I see people like the Greensboro crew and the Austin crew at the Glue / Strutter show and they're all making killer music, traveling around, and having fun. As for me, it's probably been about a year since I've written a song. I can't remember the last time I picked up my guitar outside of shows and band practice. Sometimes I feel like I can't even remember what fun is. I do have some hope that the spring will be better, but it's been a very difficult fall for me, and it looks like I have at least another month in the weeds before things quiet down at all.
Here's a review of the recent book All Ages: The Rise and Fall of Portland Punk 1977-1981 that I wrote on goodreads:
I loved all of the minutiae in this book. Basically, the author started a kind of anarchist-style collective in Portland during the titular years, and the book contains all kinds of interesting info like meeting minutes, budgets, etc., that provide the kind of granular detail that most punk history books don't. Those parts are great, but basically whenever the author starts talking in generalities I start to hate this book. He has a habit of lapsing into casual sexism and homophobia (a product of his times, I guess) and ranting about incredibly abstract, mostly irrelevant topics for pages on end. The worst was his capsule history / critique of anarchist theory at the very end of the book. Fortunately the book is organized into small sections so if you smell something fishy you can just skip those parts, and even if the writing were completely abysmal (it's not) there's a wealth of primary source info here that's just fascinating. There are a lot of books about the history of punk I'd recommend before this one, but if you want to read everything about this topic (and I do) you'll certainly learn a lot.
I'm pretty into books and I like to see what other punks are reading, so if you're active on Goodreads friend me or whatever here.
That's all for this week! Who knows what I'll write about next week? Only one way to find out I guess!
All Things to All People Vol. 1
So, welcome to my new blog, All Things to All People. I suppose I should start by saying why this blog exists. First of all, as you can probably tell if you follow Sorry State closely, I really like writing. I do a lot of it for Sorry State, but for various reasons (most of them technological), that writing tends to be very tightly structured. Generally, the main things I write are record descriptions and my parts for the newsletter, which are great, but it doesn't leave me much room to write about other things that I care about... like music that we don't have for sale on the site, shows I go to, and other random stuff that might fly through my head at any given time. So, All Things to All People is meant to be kind of a clearing-house for things that I want to say that don't fit elsewhere on the site.
I've had a few blogs in my life, but one of the reasons that I decided to start a new one right now is because I've been thinking about media and punk. I've been running Sorry State for a long time (over a decade now!), but one of the things that I feel like I've never quite gotten a hold of is promotion. Maybe it's from being raised to be self-effacing to a fault, but I am an absolutely terrible hype man. I've been attempting to combat this problem a bit by drumming up some press coverage for my upcoming releases, but by and large this has been an abject failure. I was thinking about why this is the case, and then it occurred to me that Sorry State is its own media outlet. People tell me all the time how much they like the newsletter and I know that a lot of people rely on it to introduce them to new music, much as people used to rely on zines and radio shows back in the old days. Basically, what I'ms saying that even though it isn't billed as such, Sorry State is as much of a zine as it is a record store or a label or a distro, so maybe it's about time I started to get comfortable with that and embrace it.
As for the title, honestly I don't think it's very good and I may end up changing it later. I didn't want to name it after a song because that felt kind of cheesy, and for some reason that phrase popped into my head. I think it's because I really admire people that have strong convictions and stand up for what they believe in. I, however, am not one of those people. I am an adapter, and I feel like I'm always shifting my identity in subtle ways given the demands of a particular situation. Maybe that's because I spend my life traveling between two worlds--punk and academia--but even within punk I sometimes feel like I'm one person with my crusty friends, one person with my nerdy friends, one person with my "garage rock" friends, etc. So, going along with the aversion to hype that I wrote above, the title of this blog is basically in insult to myself for being spineless. Yay me.
I woke up this morning to find out that Dickie Hammond from Leatherface died. I've never been one to write my own little eulogies on Facebook every time a celebrity dies--why does anyone care what I have to say about it?--but Leatherface were a very special band to me at one point in my life. Honestly, I virtually never listen to them anymore. A few months ago I realized that I would skip them every time they came up on shuffle on my phone, so I actually deleted all of their music from the music library on my phone. I think that's probably for the best. I spent so many years drilling Leatherface's songs into my head that maybe it's better that I have a good long break so that I can come back to them later with fresh ears. I feel thankful that I did get to see the band with Dickie on guitar since he was such an important part of the seminal lineup, but honestly those were not the best Leatherface shows I ever saw, mostly because they were lacking Lainey's powerful drumming. Anyway, I didn't know Dickie but his music was very important to me, and I think it's particularly sad to think that the magical way that his playing combined with Frankie Stubbs' will never happen again.
Above is a Leatherface deep cut that I grabbed off of Spotify. I probably could have chosen an even deeper cut given the fact that I have a pretty gnarly Leatherface vinyl collection, but I've always been partial to this song, and it's one of the ones I tend to reach for when I pull out my Leatherface records. Apparently it's a cover, but I've never heard the original.
In happier news, Nick G≠ hipped me to this jam a few days ago and I can't get enough. It's really weird, but I think that if you can get down with Whatever Brains do it probably won't be too much for you. It is more rock & roll, though... parts of it remind me of Destroyer's most Bowie-esque material, but filtered through the dark camp of the Birthday Party and early Roxy Music. Anyway, hopefully I can get some copies for the store or at least one for myself.
Watched about half of this documentary about the Gun Club, but I couldn't make it the whole way through. If you can't get the rights to the music of the band you're covering, why would you proceed with making the documentary? At least this was a bit better than that Replacements documentary, which made me want to stab myself in the eye.
So, this month (October 26 to be precise) saw the 2nd anniversary of our retail store opening in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. I'd completely forgotten about it until I saw someone else mention it on Facebook, but it's a proud moment I guess. I think that I can now safely say that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into when I decided to open the shop, but we renewed our lease for another two years so I guess I'm going to keep at it.
Given the anniversary, now seems a good time to mention something that I think about a lot: money. Every once in a while I'll catch a subtle comment or just get the vibe that people think that I'm all about money and that I do all of this for my own personal gain. That is not the case at all. Especially compared to other distros we might seem really big or "professional," but I assure you that we are 100% DIY. Sorry State is the result of thousands upon thousands of hours of hard work, and there are no trust funds or invisible financial backers behind us. There is also no hope of riches in our future. I have never paid myself a wage or salary from the store or label. I do occasionally snag records for my personal collection, but not nearly as often as you think (maybe 3-4 new records per month plus the occasional bonzer that I can't let go of). I work a full-time job (a pretty poorly paid one, I might add) in addition to running the store and label, which means that every day I wake up at 6AM, work all day, and then after my main job I do work for the store until 7 or 8PM, and I generally spend most of my weekends at the store too. I am perpetually behind on everything, broke, and exhausted. I don't say this to brag or for your pity, but rather to make it clear where your money is going when you buy something from Sorry State.
Sorry State does not exist to make money; Sorry State makes money so that it can continue to exist.
I am a punk. I take punk seriously and it means the world to me. If I ever have to choose between my personal ethics and values (which have been shaped largely by punk) and running Sorry State, then that is the day we close up shop for good. Sorry State has never done anything I consider shady or slimy, and I'm proud of the things we have accomplished and all of the art that we have helped--to some degree or another--to support. I don't wear my politics and values on my sleeve... I don't have a logo in the Crass Records stencil font and I don't go around sloganeering, but I hold my values dear and I will continue to uphold them. I'm not sure if any of this is actually making sense or not, but I just want to put that on the table and (hopefully) make it clear what I'm all about.
I'll leave it there for now. The plan is to make this blog a weekly thing, so look forward to more disconnected musings next week!
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