“In US politics, the dominant, hegemonic group are neoliberals: the establishment wing of the Democratic Party and GOP.
Loyalists to the establishment are never censored. Those who are censored are dissidents, those who oppose that establishment power. That’s how it always works.” Glenn Greenwald)
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” (- Rumi)
“Unbanning megacelebrities gets a lot of publicity and makes it look like you’re doing something, but if that’s all you do you haven’t actually made speech any freer for normal people. Nothing meaningful has actually changed.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“”It’s absurd the lack of support Assange gets among people who should be afraid. His case is such an attack on the free press. But once they bring him over here & put him in jail, it will have such a chilling effect.”(-Marrianne Willisamson)
“MAGA thinks the Democratic Party is controlled by China and Ukraine.
The Democratic Party thinks MAGA is controlled by Russia. The truth is that both are controlled by the same corporate elites fleecing the people and waging war on the planet.” (-Danny Haiphong)
This dad using Hungry Hippos to teach his children that the American economy is rigged for the ruling class is my hero.” (-Ryan Knight)
“The neoliberal, pro-war democrat party is now pushing for an additional 37 billion for Ukraine while tens of thousands of U.S. citizens live in homeless encampments & millions can’t afford basic healthcare? And the only political forces questioning it are right-wing republicans?” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“When she was not busy selling out the people to Wall Street and corporate America, Nancy Pelosi was busy praising her favorite president: Ronald Reagan. All this love for her only shows how bankrupt the Democrat party is.” (-Ryan Knight)
“If you believe that there are truly deep divisions in the American political spectrum, consider how most conservatives, liberals, libertarians and even socialists rabidly defend the rights of giant corporations whose only purpose is to turn us all into lobotomized consumer slaves.” (-Primo Radical)
“Anyway, it’s obvious why all these media corporations united to ratify what was so clearly a CIA lie right before the election.
It’s the same reason they won’t retract or acknowledge it now: They lied to ensure Trump lost, and they know their liberal audience wants them to lie.” (-Glenn Greenwald)
Founding member of both the Clash and Public Image Ltd. KEITH LEVENE has sadly left the party. Obviously two of our favorite bands. No one was as original as PIL, no one rocked as hard as the Clash. Maybe Bad Brains. Or Viletones. Anyways, the Gutter Gospel Out Crowd gang will all be having a drink to the good ole man. I never got to buy his book, broke old punk as our way of life, conscientious objecting dropout, independent diehard, here. Cheers, though! Such talent, originality, innovation and uniqueness-what real punk is all about.
It’s so dead dull where I live, I end up really looking forward to going off the terra firma to do some laundry, retrieve some water, and lookie-loo around the dollar store. While we were standing in line to buy toilet paper and some $1 mittens, an unsupervised loudmouthed eighth grader being followed around by a low income housing rugrat entrouge of three, started talking mad shit about my old lady who was carrying a fake Guuci bag from the local thrift store, and the fat kid made a smartass comment about her fakeass bag, but my kid who is getting bigger and bigger has autism and watches an awful lot of Better Call Saul and Cobra Kai, was already kinda spoiling for a fight, after seeing a mean old demented codger from our former neighborhood chase a feral cat he was pals with at our old dump yesterday, so he told the Guuci dude to shaddup and we ended up having to leave without making our purchase. That was the Big Event of the day. It’s gettin’ dark earlier and I got the gate outside all locked down for the evening, I think it’s gonna be another cold night. I don’t drink around the kids and we live in a slow moving graveyard town so Sundays move by, like, real, real, even more sloooooowwwllllyyy.
My kid reads all the bullshit internet headlines of the day, and asked me who I’m gonna vote for. I guess I aint consuming enough fluoride cause as bad as my amnesis might be, I remember when the CEO of Diebold and Katherine Harris pledged an election to the Bush family. Ken Blackwell in Ohio? Polls closing early in progressive college towns, gerryrigging folks outta office, fixed primaries, super delegates-the people specify a candidate and the party sez fuck you to the people. All that shit everytime? How ya’aal forget the Supreme Court stopping the hand recount in Florida for a son of a spook? Hanging chads and Brooks Brothers Riot, my ass. Fixed from the inside by Jim Baker who signed the Minsk Agreement (google it) and the secret Bush family, deep state intelliegence agencies is more like it. They blamed that inside job corruption on a Great American Hero, actual real and true blue progressive icon, Ralph Nader, and dumb middle classers never stopped parroting that dumbfuck neo con media bullshit, did they? If they look at any of the most obviously visible, basic, rational if circumstantial evidence about the Bush selection and how Al PMRC Gore just hung his head and meekly moped away and grew a beard, in spite of winning the popular vote, or how Skull N Bones Kerry had that honor roll kid tazered by his security thugs for asking him legit questions about the recount during a speech on a university campus, or any of that coincidental No Bid Contract-Billions For Halliburton/Carlylse Group-Blackwater-NORAD called off by Dick Cheney-Rumsfeld missing trillions speech the day before-no wingspan in the Pentagon hole, Building #7 hit by no plane controlled demolition, Lucky Silverstein-Marvin Bush-Prince Bandar-art students in the basement stuff during 9/11, they’d have to acknowldge their media lies to them, shamelessly, with a high salaried straight face and sleep like babies, and that the government works for the NWO-it’s really all a corporate uniparty now- you got two parties pretending to be in opposition, but every real move they make is for the evil ruling class, all their important policies are identical. It’s One Party, the Great Lockstep, I think they call it-Total Spectrum Domination, Continuity Of Governement. The oligarchs are admitting they want to usher in their long strategized microchip cashless society starting with the new vaccination passports to move freely in any public spaces or travel. The creepy fratboy rightwing Supreme Court, all the Bill Gates captured regulatory agencies, the controlled Big 5 Vanguard owned corporate media, fake progressives, every bit of it is bought and paid for by the Davos elites. I liked what Bernie had to say back in the hazy way gone days when he packed stadiums except when it came to Cuba, Chavez, and Castro. Insiders of the DNC private services corporation rigged two primaries against him. He endorsed warpigs like insane cackling Libya destroyer Hillary Clinton and Gropey Joe the Big Guy who never campaigned except with his handler wife, in their face masks, from their basement, but still somehow, still got magically make believe elected over both Trump, and Bernie Sanders, who each had undeniably huge, legitimate, visible, grass roots populist, stadium filling supporters, real movements of people. In spite of Bloomberg spending abillion to defeat his tax the rich platform, 22 false progressives being deployed to run against free healthcare and universal housing, and evil Wall Street war people like Warren and Clinton incessantly smearing Sanders as a sexist male chauvanist and his followers as unsuitably woke “Bernie Bros”. Same kinda dirty tricks old playbook bullshit they slander Jimmy Dore and Julian Assange with nowadays.
I’m supposed to belive that the guy who fondled Tara Reade and wrote the crimebill and brags about the Iraq war and Patriot Act was elected by elderly black people waiting in five hour lines to vote for a well documented lifelong racist in Michigan, that creepy, sniffy, obviously suffering from dementia, shakes hands with invisible people, falls down, insults workers, makes up bullshit fucking lies all the time, Pony Soldier Corn Pop Gropey Joe with the crackhead kid in the oil company biz of Ukraine, was voted in to office fair and square, with no Russian interference that time just suddenly, on Super Tuesday during a pandemic in Michigan, but I never believed that, at all. If you say you think elections are fake in this country, people like AOC and her techlord billionaire super pac donors will want to get you cancelled or punished for science and feminism and woke pro nouns, cause Lyn Cheney says so, but I don’t believe that any of those remaining Democrats are really progressive, egalitarian, or stand for any real cause, or leftist tradition, or power to the people underdog peace principle, besides empty window display gender and hue and sexual identity tokenism. They are all pro police state. I don’t believe in any of them, anymore. They are all warpig Thank Obamas. One big controlled opposition fraud-squad that robs from the poor to give to the rich. Inside trading private plane owners who coup whoever they want and install puppet governments for oil companies, big pharma, or need more lithium billionaires with mercenary proxy armies and media control do not represent me. I think it’s a sad and pathetic disgrace so many of my ex associates make excuses for them. They are all fake as fuck, all of ’em. the frauds don’t even take phonecalls from people like Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich or Jill Stein or Cynthia Mckinney, anymore. They try to cancel culture Robert Kennedy and Naomi Wolf. They tried their best to keep Mike Gravel (RIP) out of debates and routinely fight in court to exclude the Green Party from the ballots. They don’t believe in freedom or genuine democracy-they are all just oligarchy owned, globalist billionaire controlled, rightwing Bloomberg Democrats with some empty tweet pillow talk for the middle class. Fuck those people. They wrote a lukewarm, pretty cowardly, maybe we should peace talk negotiate for the good of human beings lives, faux anti war manifesto, and TOOK IT BACK the next day when their pro WW3 overlord bosses didn’t like it. NONE OF THEM ARE ANTI CENSORSHIP or advocating the spook state to FREE ASSANGE. They campaigned on reunite the border familes and free the children from the human trafficking child gulags, and defund the police-remember all the justice tweets and crocodile tears? They campaigned on student debt forgiveness and free college…and TOOK IT BACK, when their big bank boses didn’t like it. Pelosi told AOC to shaddup and sit down, and she did, voting to help arm fucking nazis in the Ukraine, voting to superfund the racist police. Voting for more war and less freedom, civil liberties, and only conditional, sometimes maybe, ig big pharma says it’s okay my body/my rules bodily autonomy. AOC phony socialist poser swans around with occultic billionaires at the secret society Met Gala Epstein Island visitor Rockefeller ball in a joke “Tax the Rich (wink, wink)” dress that means nothing. Some bartender advocate for the workers. Abandoned the Fight For Fifteen when a living wage would be more like thirty five in this Gates-Reset Rich Get Richer Economy. What a scam, what a disappointment. “But how does Elon Musk feel about it”?? Moving on.
Sundays have always killed me, something to do with old lifelong trauma, maybe residual dread left over from my school days. I remember in my twenties when people are still kinda alive and open to experinecing life beyond the clock punching workaday drudgery of nine to five robot existence, people still almost never wanted to rock on Sundays, even outcast heavy metal dudes from my savage hellion gangs were prone to vanishing into the bachelor bedroom stench of their heaps of unwashed clothes and dirty dishes and inevitably endup watching fucking football on Sundays. They want you to order them a Large meat lover’s pizza with breadsticks and some beer and a two litre of Coke, when you get a second, alright? I’m not making this up. I wrote a song about it a long time ago, I think I was 24: “wishing on the faintest star aint got no one like Johnny Marr I’m staring at my friend’s guitar but he’s outside hosing down his car”. That was a big part of manhood where we came from. Shirtlessly hosing down your oversized white truck on Sunday. And fucking sundecks-they all competed to see who could build the biggest wraparound sundeck where all the porky ex cheerleader flooozy boozy white suburban moms could party in the hot tubs. Now I’m old, still can’t relate to people’s obsession with the property upgrading and constant remodeling, and insatiable attraction to big white trucks or fat Barbie hot tubs. Everybody in the suburbs buys gym equipment they only use once. They all collect as many vehicles as possible-RV’s, campers, off road vehicles, snow mobiles. I guess I’m into records, old magazines. It’s unseasonably cold here, the neighbors two houses down, but behind us, had a gigantic shindig last night, some kinda early Thanksgiving fest-with the lights and music and big backayrd full of cars and trucks. Man, what was up with that? It was some kinda major even holiday party. I kinda felt some kinda pangs of dislocation, of wishing my friends and family weren’t all dead and gone. Both me and my kid inhabit these very isolated, alienated, internet worlds of very limited social interaction. I dunno what happened to the people, I dunno what drugs they’re on. I don’t speak tv commercial.
“I cannot stomach Biden bragging about all the great work he’s doing,when we are living in the worst and most expensive timeline.Every time he talks like that he’s erasing ppl that are struggling,suffering, hungry,homeless,poor,w/o medicine,hurting and living paycheck to paycheck.” (-Thia Ballerina)
“The first reporting I ever did on Big Tech censorship was in 2016: how Israel was handling lists to Facebook of Palestinian journalists they wanted banned, and FB obeyed.
That’s how censorship works: a weapon to protect power against the marginalized.” (-Glenn Greenwald)
“The US gov is trying to destroy Steven Donziger in the same way they’re trying to destroy Julian Assange. They hope it will stop others from ever challenging the ruling elite or holding them accountable for their crimes.” (-Lee Camp)
Watching all the green leaves fall off my tree after the second frost through my picture window in a heated house, I gotta say, I’m kinda restless and ill tempered, trying not to lash out at anybody around me but kinda experiencing a lot of holiday related sorrow and grief and some resentments about how things went. about twenty years ago, my shit fell down like dominoes, ya know and I never really regained my proper footing or position. Holidays remind me of all that was lost-sentimental shit that was stolen from storage space and old apartments, a lot of precious fleeting time with distant relatives and other loved ones we can’t get back, projects I had to abandon after pouring a lotta energy and all my money into them, songs that are kinda being held captive by former associates and their asskiss sycophant yesmen flatterers. Mostly, a lot of empty space, where the cherished people of Christmas Past should be. Death, death, death is everywhere I look now. People keep dropping dead but nobody wants to speculate about how come that is happening. I’d take a stroll down to the Mexican swap meet in the frosty chill this morning but I can’t find the brush in a cluttered household we are still kinda unpacking and while I might think Alex Mitchell or Ari Up looked cool with dreadlocks, the ole Mexican cowboys who mostly don’t speak English over there are already lookin’ at me like I’m Billy The Kid. I dread having to deal with the general public today, I’m not a big social butterfly anymore, they all seem like hustlers and predators and schemers and users to me now. These crazy old women are all muttering to themselves, singing loud religious songs in the grocery store for attention, talking to their dogs who are somehow allowed into every fucking business by the sensitivity-shitlib culture. The males are just like primitive apes at the zoo. People who are running local businesses are gouging just like Wal Mart—people who don’t have to gank the prices up are getting profit drunk greedy, trying to always scam more from the poor for no good reason besides I dunno, maybe impressing their wife and her sisters, that kinda shit. Aint no women in this slow moving graveyard town, so you know the ancient derelict looking males who never wash their clothes are all kinda gross and inappropriate whenever they are in the prsesence of a younger female. They all lose their minds attempting to do these gawky stupid human tricks to try to impress my wife, they all offer to give her stuff, fix something for her, or whatever their shtick is, they do it everytime they see her. Even like the older indian activist guy I’d made friends with who’d grown up with summa my resistance culture historical figures, he could not keep it togather around my old lady. Every cable guy, ex sherriff refrigerator repairman, shopkeep, hermit nutjob with obvious dementia problems yelling at birds and shit, every handyman or mechanic finds some way to like keep us hostage all day, so they can bask in the presence of my old lady, who is seen as a hot young thang here by all these clumbsy boomers who feel compelled to tell her all about their vehicles, property and high school sports career from thirty years ago. Glory days really do pass you by in the blink of a young girl’s eye. I know I have my own version of that, I guess-of glory days-only mine involves big oversized Steve Stevens hair and makeup and heavy drinking and cassette demos, rather than big truck ownership, power tools, drywall or watching the Nascar races on ESPN at the chickenwing place.
I kinda have these harsh obligations to see people today, while at the laundromat and junk shop, an old dude is coming by to do some handyman fix-it stuff for our landlord, and I got to brace myself for what the teenager might say to shock and offend all these gray haired old locals. Antisocial glamrachists like me don’t enjoy interacting with mentally ill gotimes and shithoarders, idle heiress gimme gimmes, or horny old perv miner forty-niners. Hadda see a crazy old psycho former neighbor still angrily chasing feral cats yesterday, who was part of the reason we moved away from that neighborhood, a crazy old crackpot kept kidnapping neighborhood cats the rest of us all looked out for, he’s just one of those unhinged loner, senselessly hostile, unabomber type of mean old men you don’t wanna feud with cause he’s obviously not well, but he keeps lashing out with these provocative and misguided attacks on others, cause he’s mad at city hall. He can’t fight city hall, so he kinda does all this fuckedup shit to upset autistic teenagers and old women who care for animals. I can’t deal with all these crazy fucking nutjobs, so I end up withdrawing into my own “Creem” magazine universe, even though I know those times are gone for me, I’m still here, kickin’. What can I do? I am what I am, they can diagnose me with anything they want, call me every TIKTOK smear in the new lexicon-narcissist, cys born, manspreader, tankie, alcoholic, borderline personality disorder, lazy loser, paranoid conspiracy theorist, antisemetic cause I support Palestinian children, they can slander my name all over the place, use every trendy talk new slang faux woke insult in the college kids book of how words no longer have actual definitions, it don’t change my dilemma. I’m still into Aerosmith, Iggy Pop, the Stray Cats and Comsat Angels. I do not dig the tv or believe anything spoken by politicians or paid for war whores, or people who just play doctors on tv, or transhumanist aspirant god billionaires who are on the record insisting they should be in charge of the seeds, food supply, your body, and depopulating the so called third world for capitalist profit. You gotta start paying attention to Vandana Shiva. The shitlib pro Lyn Cheney faux woke faugressive boutique Dems are more tightly controlled by the oligrachy now than even the kkkop worshipping Maga patriotism Alex Jones xenophobic, blame it all on China, Tucker Carlson right. What’s extra fuckedup is inside job blowhard high priced vitamin pusher, Alex Jones, says things that are more truthful, and facts based, provable, more often than the Squad and Bernie, now. The Squad and Bernie are pro censorship, pro DHS child cages, pro endless war. Those were supposed to be our progressive heroines. What happened to free housing, healtcare, college and reuniting familes in the border gulags? They just dropped every issue they campaigned on and then said they have to give more trillions for Ukraine to slowbleed Russia, build a buncha new war bases in Australia to prepare for war with China and or Iran, outlaw people’s protests in public spaces cause AOC swears she was traumatized by Qshaman. and the Maga redneck who put his feet on Pelosi’s desk. Think about how fuckedup that is. Talk about BAIT AND SWITCH. Bernie sounds just like Hillary Clinton now. All Russiagate, all the time. A gun nut Texan rightwing infowarrior pushing conspiranoia to help sell survival supplies to Don’t Tread On Me, camo truck, cop lovin’ militias is being more factual than any of the empty justice tweeter identity puppets vetted by the oligarchs to make middle classers feel good over mimosas, while they’re Amazon shopping for aromatherapy products and healing candles or whatever. That’s some crazy “THEY LIVE!” state of affairs!! The whole time middle classers were parroting Wasserman Schultz-Hillary-Podesta’s pinkhat “blue no matter who” bullshit fan fiction, “Russiagate” partyline, I always saw Trump obeying Netanyahu, Kushner, Addelson…NOT Russia or Assad. All the news is about Elon Musk. I’m tired of hearing about billionaires, I wish there was still a real resistance, a true opposition. The NWO is not your friend. It’s too gloomy for words here, nothing to do, nowhere to go. It’s rough business, the clampdown shut us down years and years ago, and some of us still aint been able to rebuild any sortof resistance community, or rebel alliance, or bohemian scene, that’s not dominated by the gentrification airbandb owning, brand builder, ego trip shitlibs.
Man, ya never see genuine originality or real thing punk rock anymore. I mean rich people with expensive designer clothes covering old songs from the seventies in overpriced big city bars on expensive vintage gear, who live in five thousand dollar a month apartments do not really qualify. PURE ZERO were hardcore before hardcore, and brought that whole MC5 aggressive musicianship to the party. Back in the heyday of raunchy get down bombed out east side streetwalkin’ punk rock, Philly produced PURE HELL, dynamite looking, leather clad, punk as fuck rockers who were like a black Deadboys or angrier, sleazier east coast version of protopunk Detroit’s own Death. I was like seven or eight when they were doing this but they def. helped lay down the exact prototype of what me and my ex cronies in all the big mohawks and spikes and painted leather were doing in all the crazy eighties backyard/basement, bozo hobo, snarly D.I.Y. underground, trashy glam and sleazepunk leather years that followed. No, they just don’t make ’em like they used to. Originally they called themselves Pretty Poison, but changed their name after relocating to NYC’s Chelsea Hotel and playing on bills with the Cramps, Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, Wayne County and the NY Dolls. They toured England in 1978 and played with bands like the Subs and Wilko Johnson. As is the case so often in the music biz, if you get involved with scummy maganement, you’re fucked, they had bad career advice, got their master tapes confiscated by an unscrupulous associate-I been there myself-like so, so many of us they kinda got fucked over by some shady saboteur music biz hustlers, so they are not always righteously remembered as the pioneering glamour punk forerunners that paved the way for groups from Bad Brains to the Hellacopters to the old early nineties Original Suffering Bastards, my Allston ghetto gutter gang. But man did they ever rock like fuck! I was nver into th Nancy Sinatra song but all their other stuff is aces in my book. They were black dudes from seventies Philadelphia but they had a look like the UK Subs or Lords Of The New Church. Faster and more ferocious than almost any of their contemporaries from the first generation punk scene. DIG!
Contrary to decades of lazy entertainment weekly cover stories, it is really not much of a liability anymore to have a band that is fronted by a loudly glamorous and rebellious and attractive vocalist who is a woman. I don’t like very much of what passes for punk rock in the monarch programming world of corporate media, I’ll tell ya that, but here’s a band that rocks like fuck. I like ’em more than I liked the Distillers and less than I liked the Divinyls, but that just means I’m telling you they are very good. It’s my kinda thing, really. Loudmouthed hellraisers are what we need more of, actually. It’s a bit like me or Cait Johnstone—WITH GUITARS!
“All I want for Christmas is a general strike.” (-Primo Radical)
So ya know, me and my old lady have been kinda bouncing around ever since then, pinballing, doing our best to stay in proximity to my kids and throw as much of a silver tinsel and mistletoe, evergreen scented ho-ho-ho Christmas shindig, as our meager wages as caregivers, teaching assistants, dishwashers, and low wage big box wage slave laborors will allow. I get kinda sentimental every year around the autumn time Thanksgiving hoopla, cause I naturally miss my dead grandparents and aunt, whom I spent all my holidays with for like the first forty years of my life or whatever. Then, there are all the fallen friends who’ve also passed unexpectedly in recent years, I’m grieving them as well. I don’t hear that much from the kids nowadays-one of ’em has basically gone missing, so ya know I wake up worried about her an awful lot, you don’t stop worrying about your kids just cause they grow up and leave the nest and start doing their own thing, ya know? To make it all even crazier, summa my lifelong cohorts got hooked on some bad drugs and seemed to have really lost all reason, doing unexplainable, shocking shit, resulting in necessary estrangements and divorces and stuff, so it is a cold morning here. We’ve commenced the customary holiday decorating and the kid’s getting boxes in the mail from all over the world for his birthday and Christmas hauls, we’d postponed some celebrations during a very hectic period of relocating to a more properly heated abode, and this is the most at home we’ve felt since my grandmother and aunt were still alive and sharing space with us in my olde Kentucky home. It feels good. My godmother lived down the street when I was growing up, and she’d start her partying early, I miss all the hometown festivities we used to know. I wrote a couple Christmas songs. I’ve always liked Christmas songs. Chamber Strings and Jacobites, “2000 Miles”, Elvis and the Pogues, Slade, and “Yellin’ At The Christmas Tree”, ya know? Chris Isaak’s got a Christmas album out right now. I love that guy.
There’s no anti war people where I live, really. Not even like some John & Yoko, old boomer, potsmoke Beatle hippies. The oldsters are all either hardcore gun nut, immigrant hating, big game shooting, rightwing cowboys… or wealthy, pro censor, neo-conned gender worship shitlibs, The faux woke hipsters are your usual hot rod Fonzies and new age ZZ Tops self promoting their art gallery or airbandb and if anything, they are pro war, pro kkkop, pro military, etc., One dude is always posting about his Masons membership–they just got that Brooklyn gentrification hipster image patina on all the usual yoga-capitalist gimme gimme money scheming. Some Day Of The Dead skulls and a black velevet catus painting. Man, it gets me down. one dude moved to town and had all the affectations, the sunglasses and tattoos, but I saw his Facebook page and he was basically promoting all the bad and evil big business, corporate media shams and hustles I oppose, so ya know, we can’t really be in Cramps style punk band together. I’m antiwar and anti pig-media. Pro freedom, pro peace, anti p.c.shitlib/elitist safespace cloistered/ snitch squads scolding off script comics, pro fun. Whatever happened to that cat who used to do the WHITE TRASH SOUL magazine online? I loved that mag, NOW WAVE, FIRST CHURCH OF HOLY ROCKNROLL which I think got rebranded as LIVING TO LISTEN, and SONS OF DOLLS, BEER FOR BREAKFAST and SHE DIDN’T LIKE ROCKNROLL.. Mostly the rock press is dead and gone-Rolling Stone promotes war, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and Klaus Schwab agendas-ya know?
I used to know this guy Tony Coiro a little bit from going to see shows in NYC every chance I got, either on bus, or in a 74 spraypainted Oldsmobile that got all kinda parking tickets all day and attracted an unfortunate lot of bad attention from east Rutherford New Jersies boys in blue when the water pump broke and we took it to be repaired at a small mechanic in their fair town-the garage did not really have much of a waiting room and we were trying to save our money ya know for beer and black t shirts from Trash & vaudeville and cutout vinyl from Sounds on St. Mark’s Place when we got downtown ya know? So we walked around a little, had a cheap breakfast at a greasy spoon and were loitering around outside the garage when two unmarked Chrysler K cars and about five cruisers surrounded us suddenly like we were bankrobbers or some shit. My driver and wouldbe manager at that time, a Catholic school pal and true believer named Mitch, he had his graduation day tassle dangling from the rearview so they said that was the reason they stopped us while we were pulling out from the garage, but supposedly, somebody from the bank did not like the looks of our car with all the spraypainted skulls and leopard print and leather jackets and head scarves and military hats, thought we looked fishy and called the cops. Those guys harrassed and harrangued us needlessly for over an hour because they could, just slingin’ insults and guffawing amongst themselves. It was obvious we were hick kids from the Midwest going to the city to see some shows and buy some records but those cops were having the time of their lives, givin’ us the business. Anyways, I was still hoping to relocate my band to seedy Lower Manhattan back then, cause there were still shitty holes you could rent with like a bathtub in the kitchen, old storefronts and shit if you were willing to live amongst the junkies and sexworkers and crazy street people and windshield hustlers on the Lower East Side. Some of our bandmates back then were just starting to really enjoy the popularity they finally managed to grasp hold of their senior year, summa those guys were late bloomers, took ’em a minute to get their thing together cool-wise, so they weren’t all as motivated as I was to escape from that horrible shithole we grew up in. They were kinda like enjoying the friendly flood of new girls they were meeting while heavy metal hairbands were all over MTV and it was becoming hip n cool to like have long hair and dress like a biker. I remember that vampire movie “The Lost Boys” came out and all these sorta mainstream girls from the other side of the tracks started showing up at our parties and the new wave bar where my bassist was the hip n popular DJ, wearing a bit of black makeup and setting their eyes on my scrappy bandmates. My older guitarist’s cold slum basement apartment with the loudly clanging eighteenth century furance and small rodents and bad plumbing, and then later on, my purple apartment and yellow bandhouse, Paradise Lost, were the flashpoint ground zero of the late eighties garage punk scene in the midwest-like it’s been said about the Velvets and Pistols, not that many people came to our band’s shows or infamous partyhouse all weekend rehearsals, but the ones who did all seemed to form bands after that that went on to some greater notoriety. That Tony Coiro cat was always encouraging me to bring my band to the city, said he’d help us get gigs, he introduced me to all kinda people, ya know that was sorta his thing, he was a very gregarious, outgoing, wisecrackin’ man about town. One dude he introduced me to was his childhood chum, Brother Michael Volgare, and we stayed friends all this time ever since. One of Michael’s favorite bands were Phillip Marcade’s THE SENDERS!
“In My Lai at least Calley was convicted. No one was charged in Collateral Murder. My Lai whistleblower was listened to by Congress. Collateral Murder whistleblower went to jail. In My Lai the journalist won an award. In Collateral Murder the journalist is in a British prison.” (-Joe Lauria)
“NATO allies have provided training to Ukrainian forces since 2014. In particular, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have conducted significant training in Ukraine.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admits NATO involvement in Ukraine since 2014.” (-Mint Press News)
“The obvious question, as others have raised, is that if Zelensky insists on lying through his teeth about an incident that threatened World War III (a threat he encouraged by calling for intervention), what else has his government lied about?” (-Aaron Mate’)
“Liberals are turning against other liberals as liberal totalitarianism takes another dangerous turn in U.S. society. Liberals are now the main enemies of liberal values as they push for censorship, war & justify colonialism. It’s madness.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“She’s going down as someone who amassed over $100 million dollars while in office. ” (-Jimmy Dore on Private Plane Pelosi)
I’ll tell ya when I was a kid, I loved Tyla, that was my idea of a raggedy heart on his sleeve poet troubador, but as I got older I started to resonate more with Willie D, whose style and soulpower and vocal and performance style ya know always imprinted on me in a profound and powerful way. Him n Toots reminded me a little of me and a similarly kooky chick I got foolishly involved with under an intensely inebreiated romantic moon several lifetimes ago. I still vibe with Willie. Especially on one of those all too rare champagne evenings in my old age.
“I don’t think Twitter will end tonight. But I do think the US will continue to give Ukraine tens of billions to escalate a possible WWIII scenario with Russia. Regardless of what happens to Twitter, be sure to subscribe to my Telegram to follow my work covering Russia, China, and the anti-imperialist struggle for a multipolar world:
Ya know I mostly was truant or suspended or hiding out from the corrupt juvie authorities who wanted to incarcerate me while their honkified, sports car driving, golf shitrted, richboy bully armies chased me around like a monster for my dress code violations, the town was on a main drug highway, so the poor part of town was overflowing with crack and drug violence, and the rich elite suburban preppies were your typical rightwing dickheads like you saw in those eighties John Hughes movies about clashing cliques-the suburban dudes in the white Miami Vice jackets really were some mansion dwelling, abusive sons a bitches. It was hard to get ahold of any new music back then because you had to special order any punk or imports from the reciord store and we were all poor as fuck and mainly spending what little cash we had on malt liquor and Marlboros-we would check out the Village Voice at the library to fund out what was going on punk rock wise in the big cities-even as early as like fifteen to seventeen, I was already grieving friends who were being murdered like my main man Beefy, and already pining for loves who were lost to the winning jocks from the better side of town. You know that Love & Rockets song “Haunted When The Minutes Drag”? That was major to me, and everything by the Smiths, New Order, Joy Division, the Cure, even U2 I am now ashamed to say. You know what was a big moment for us? The Sid N Nancy soundtrack. Still kills me. I was at Wal Mart and saw how Bush buddy Bono has a book out, ya know, fuck that guy and all his WEF/Davos/Agenda 21/Gates-Reset dystopian billionaire ilk, but I do remember liking alot of his old songs, “You glorify the past when your future dries up” is particularly stinging this morning. Power corrupts, absolutely. Back then, the mainstrream sports dickheads weren’t really pretending to be interested in music. Their idea of rock only went as far as maybe Huey Lewis whos big hit album was called “Sports” and pretty much inescapable back in that Phil Collins country that spit me out, Bon Jovi, Journe,y or those Godawful radio bands, “ba ba ba baybe you aint seen nuthin’ yet”, and “takin’ care of busieness, everyday, takin’ care of business…” It was really like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Korn, Alice In Chains and white rappers that ushered in all those insufferable richkid dickheads who call themselves alternative or indie. Middleclass posers still suck.
“The only force that benefits from twitter shutting down is neoliberal rulers who want to constrict speech & information that does not conform to the official narratives. Twitter needs to be opened up. Only restrictions is calling for physical harm against another person or group.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Censorship is anathema. I’d prefer to know what Alex Jones is saying rather than to have him “shut up.” As odious as I find Hillary Clinton I need to hear her words.
I want to choose my own thoughts.” (-Helen Rudnik)
“The secret reason the US continues to despise Cuba is because of the threat of the good example. Cuba has 100% literacy, zero homelessness, near zero unemployment, & free healthcare. The US gov doesn’t want Americans to realize this is possible.” (-Lee Camp)
“It’s so woke to make out on the beaches of stolen Palestinian land.
But if you’re Palestinian, you’re not allowed on these apartheid beaches at all.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“BREAKING JUAN GUAIDO has declared himself the INTERIM CEO of new Twitter.” (-Fiorella Isabel)
“BREAKING: The “rogue” sheriff who took $355,000 from pipeline company
“Imagine thinking China is a threat in a society where mass shootings occur regularly, thousands die without healthcare or housing each year, and corporations routinely influence elections.
This is America.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“When corporations own the levers of the state, it’s called Inverted Totalitarianism: Anonymous corporate rule. Very Americans realize we live under this perverse system.” (-Lee Camp)
Man, there used to some people I could call when life became too crazy and I was struggling to manage all my impulses and reactions to the suffocating propaganda and madness all around us. Jaysin B., Howie, Jonna, Keith Binkman Binkley, Unconscious Robert, Jen, Pentegram, Andy 2, Tattoo Mark, Big Jim, Paranoid Jay, Paul K, Dave Andra, Cowboy Bob, they’re all gone, now. Corey Lott, Austin Hill, Kevin Little, Bobby Hessling, Justin Borra, so many people I’d grown up with are already dead. The ones who got where I was coming from, the ones I could count on. The ones who like to dance on the tabletops, howl at the moon, rage against the dying of the punknroll subculture. Beefy, Danny, Mitch, now, Joey…Whoa, man-I had just written a postcard to Joey like a month ago-what the fuck-all these people should not just be dying suddenly in our fifties-it feels so wrong, unnatural, ya know, and there aint nobody round to really even mourn with ya know? Now what few survivors remain just stayed in th bad places so long they got fuckin’ reassimilated into the tv world with the Karens and the baseball caps-and I don’t have the emotional wherewithal to deprogram ’em again. I try to leave ’em be with their football and their Nascar, partisan politics schoolplays, and McDonald’s drive through news sources. I sent a letter to an old hombre, they never botherd to write me back, so ya know I took that to mean, they’ve gone over to the deathstar with the pantsuited warpigs and pink wigs for fauxwokeness and pigmedia celebrities and wives who want more shit from Amazon. What can ya do? Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is leave motherfuckers alone and recognize they aint on the same frequency no more. I sent some sentimental pictures via e-mail to some people I knew a long, long, long time ago, but you know how it is-they stayed in that hometown, kept watching tv, inherited a house, kinda still think of thesmselves as arty punk party people but really, everything they say they stand for on their Twitter page is by the book, official narrative, lockstep corporate, status quo wealth worshipping, pro spy, pro war, pro censorship kkkopaganda, so it aint like we can really get along, or have any honest conversations, anymore. They’re so stuck in the past they still fall for all that old paradigm, partisan divide red versus blue phony horsehit. Really deep down I think they know their preferred politicians guard the privilge of the ownership society and since they inherited property they think of themselves as part of the rightful ruling class, they have that fuckedup landlord world view. Look at my degree, look at my stupid fucking hot tub. I earned it with my virtue and hard work inheriting property the hard way, and pulling myself up by my spouse’s investment property income.
Even my ex friends I met on the coasts in the big cities are pretty unreachable now cause they’re all married off and deeply immersed and invested in their private world fame brands as boutique owners or radio show hosts, or hipster podcasters or book signing celebrity classers or whatever their brand hustle shuck n jive might be. Everybody owns some high dollar gentrified airbandb with their wife with a black Elvis poster on the wall and a fancy framed Blondie album cover, or plays in some dodgy Johnny Thunders covers corny big city gentrification band and sucks up to people who have more money and access, even when they have very limited talent or artistic content and try to buy or steal content from lesser than, no name, dirty poors. People I once had on a pedestal are now sonic reduced to mere media rube slogan repeaters. I can’t fuckin reach no middle class people, they been too college indoctrinated to believe they already got all the answers and the secret management classs handshake and are standing in line to get their special VIP permission travel pass from their WEF/Davos philanthropic overlords. Even the Associated Press multiplies unchecked empire warpig propaganda now-how sad it that shit? Too sad! Amy Goodman pimps for war. “I just wanna walk right outta this world cause everybody has a poison heart” rings truer each and everyday.
“Liberals have raged against Russia’s military operation in Ukraine for seven months but haven’t said a word about the seven *direct* wars that the US is engaged in around the world nor its dozens of other proxy wars.
Liberals are imperialist hypocrites.” (-Danny Haiphong)
In spite of being famously covered by Guns N Fuckin Roses, not that many of my old metal head, speed demon, failed their piss test for the factory, reptile owning stoner headbanger friends seem all that versed on Rose Tattoo. I know Jimmy James from Junkyard, Hangmen, and the Coma-Tones shares my love for them, and an Australian music scenester I used to be friends with, she was sad to tell me how our working class hellraiser old Angry Anderson was a rightwinger, but then again, she told me to shut the fuck up and defriended me when I questioned the official shitlib narrative about how fascist bullshit is magically made okeydokey if the establishment trots out some females of color to co sign the same old patriarchal rightwing fascist shit, I don’t agree with that and told her so, she insisted that in her middleclass gender oriented, girlboss propertarian feelings world, she should always have the last word and final say in any conversation for science and wokeness and we never spoke again, which was sad to me, cause I always liked her previously and mistakenly thought she was a fellow proletarian, radical egalitarian, leftish activist…rather than a status quo preserving ownrship society know it all posh kinda person, and we had all the same kinda taste in music. So yeah I dunno about anybody, anymore-they all seem impossibly think tank divided and superficial body parts self identified. I like Rose Tattoo alot. “Scarred For Life” and “Rocknroll Outlaw” is what my friends would play at my funeral if any of ’em were still left alive. I caught one of my dear old pal’s memorial at the bar on youtube and it consisted of an old girlfriend of his playing some blues songs and an old soundman of his making a toast. That was sad as hell, cause I remember when he was like the rockstar ringmaster of our old dive bar, the toastmaster general, the party host, the baddest of our bunch. That dude’s in all my songs. It’s all going by too, fast now. “I’ve taken a stand for an outlaw’s life…”
“In order to sort fact from fiction when it comes to the proxy war in Ukraine, Facebook partnered with fact-checking organizations. Almost all of them are funded by or linked to the US government.” (-Lee Camp)
“Communism isn’t a threat.
China isn’t a threat. Russia isn’t a threat. The real threat to human existence is the rotting US empire seeking to bring all of us down with it.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“So its grind grind grind til you die-no life, no liberty, no pursuit of happiness…Poor (people) go to jail while Jeff Bezos builds space dicks for the rich to take joyride Gates is buying all the land around the great lakes so he can expedite the death of the poor because he will own all the fresh water east of the Mississippi tell me I’m wrong. Man living under the radar is biting me in the ass everyone seems to want a minimum credit rating of 650 or they won’t rent to you I have never had a credit card or car loan you know pay as you go…Nowadays you apparently as a citizen are required to assume debt to be deemed worthy of renting a shithole regardless if the money is guaranteed thru section 8. The other housing scam is you ahem “buy” a trailer for 3grand that’s hammered, pay 300/month lot rent you’re on the hook for all repairs to make it remotely livable or if something breaks. If you find land and want to move said piece of shit trailer well pony up 20 grand, incur further damage moving it. Then, of course, utilities cost triple because the 1 inch thick insulation doesn’t do shit. Meanwhile McMansion down the street enjoy their 75dollar utility bill. And force those wretched trailer trash to leave so the landowner your shitbox trailer sits on swoops in and offers you 1/2 what you paid for it before your repairs thinking they’re doing you a favor. For fuck sake. Im still grinding to find a place its nightmarish if your in the broke tax bracket because no one in this gentrification nation want to look at poor people.
Its looking like I’ll be camping on BLM/national forest land in Southern Arizona/New Mexico for the winter. Maybe the slabs in So-Cal. How is basic housing a privilege not a right?!” (-Nasty Bastard, Original Suffering Bastards)
“”Only a criminal wants to hide their crimes and seeks vengeance on those that expose them. And revealing war crimes is NOT a crime, unless of course you are a criminal or agree with criminals.”
Since no live shows in LA, I’ve been hitting the web to discover/rediscover some cool bands that gave it a shot, but for whatever reason, didn’t hit the mark.
ROSE TATTOO– A great band from Australia that broke in the early 1980’s, with a bluesy hard rock that was heavy on slide guitar, and the band members were heavy on tattoos and denim. These guys were a dirtier version of Guns N Roses before they existed. GNR covered one of their songs, and AC/DC was never this sleazy. Very good stuff if you dig loud grimy hard rock.
GIRL– This British band spanned Phil Lewis from LA Guns and Phil Collen from Def Leppard. Before that, they were part of this Punk Glam Hard Rock band on Don Arden’s Jet records. They released two albums that are NWOBHM classics in a very different way than most of those bands. They were raw in more of a Stooges/Ramones way and not so much metal. They redid a Kiss song and toured with UFO and the like, but I always dug them for their raw and punky attitude, all tarted up with makeup.
Smashed Gladys– Canadian band by way of NYC, these guys had a rough female lead vocalist, and they tore up the local scene with some raunchy bluesy hard rock with a dark glam image. I just recently got into these guys when I stumbled onto them on YouTube. They put out a couple of good major label releases, and were similar to Hanoi Rocks and any of the Andy McCoy led bands that came after. They used to rule the NYC Limelight scene and had a lot of hip supporters in that scene.
Electric Angels– From the ashes of Candy out of LA, came these gypsy glam NYC transplants. They recorded their major label record with super glam producer Tony Visconti and made a video with Cristina Applegate, but were unable to set the US on fire. Singer Shane had all that it took to become a superstar, timing and luck was not on their side. Guitarist Ryan Roxie now plays guitar with Alice Cooper and bassist Jonathan Daniel is a big time band manager now. My band Rebel Rebel was produced by Johnathan in the 80’s, as we were a cross of Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Motley Crue, which he dug. He hooked us up with some heavyweights in the business but we had our own agenda and wouldn’t listen to anyone. The rest is history for all of us.
The Starfighters– Great band from England that featured Stevie Young, now in AC/DC and a singer that almost became the new singer for AC/DC after Bon Scott passed away. Again, a band I just recently rediscovered as when I was a kid they were too much like AC/DC, but now I can appreciate the songs and sound, which is bluesy Hard Rock, no frills and just straight ahead. They have been pumping me up at the gym, which says a lot if you know how much I love/hate the gym! LOL Check them out, the deserve a listen.
Zodiac Mindwarp– Another great loud and dirty band from England that was more of sleazy hard rock than metal. They had a mad max/biker image, which was cool in itself, but the music was catchy and cleaver. Prime Mover is my favorite track, but you should hear them all, worth a look and listen.
I was only able to see the Electric Angels live from this list, and that was before they got signed and moved from LA to NYC. But, there is plenty of live footage from most of these bands online, please check them out and keep good old fashioned hard rock alive.
Veglam 