Pt 2 -- Insides

June 25th of this year, we played in a semi re-done warehouse space in NY. The sort of place that straddles my own fantasy of shadowy neglect, and a future oriented occupation of a modern ruin. Cracks within the cracks. The heat outdoors had finally receded to a tolerable perspiration. People lined up and poured inside with immediate convection of any and all humidity available. You can imagine that the set was equally as damp and airless. Not a suffocating sensation, but more of a race to see who could breathe the first last and only particles of oxygen left in this box of human precipitation. I speak for myself in saying that while performing a physical feat like playing drums at high speeds for an hour in such a challenging climate, the mind slows and lags while limbs move on their own at the appropriate pace. The heat is a laggardly nemesis to any efficiency your body can produce. The only way to suffer with dignity is to simplify and concentrate so that you don't pass out or vomit (ps i threw up the next night in Philly mid song)

After the set, there was a mercifully cool hallway behind the stage to stand in. I rushed out of the gig-room to breath any kind of cooler air, and burst through the door, rudely interrupting two people slyly making out in otherwise off-limits area. The hallway had about four directions to go in and some sharp corners to hide behind. I made myself scarce, not so much out of courtesy but because I needed to change into dry clothes which requires a temporary moment of bare assed-ness.

TOUR TIP: never play drums in your underwear/jeans in summer. They just won't last a full tour and they will stink forever.

I emerged from my own private corner of NY architectural shadow clothed, dryer, and comfortable only to find my only exit blocked! The couple that were sweetly pecking on a summer night were now up to something else. Shoes and socks exposed bare legs. A nude lower half obscured by a crouching partner. I turned around and walked back to my impromptu change room, out of sight. Instead of taking a minute to think on the nature of interstitial space and shady cracks and othering of industrial spaces (more than enough of that), I did my best to figure out a discreet escape. Didn't have the courage to walk through them and say "excuse me" nor did I want to hang around waiting for them to finish or proceed. So I took to my heels and to the halls and dodged out the back door, and left the shadows to cast themselves in the dark on bended knee.

Late Pass: Thoughts about a drive into NYC from four years ago PT 1

New York City takes on layers and layers of character. With every visit you can see the simultaneous painting over and peeling back of its history. Some relics are architectural, other relics tell you about what it meant to be a 'pioneer' there in the 20th century. I mean pioneering only in an internalized sense, specific to one's own tribe. The first of the evolution of a private history, facing up what's requisite of the research, exploration, and combat of a new place. This of course is speaking to the storied immigration of the first half of the 20th and the hopeful borderless migration of citizens toward another life in the big city.

One visit, while arriving in the city I must have photographed at least a dozen signs that sold the sort of "raw material" for living that in some ways doesn't "belong" in Manhattan any more. Scaffold, rubber, cement, cork, asbestos, bracketing, masonry...The landing party, frontierism of new life in the United States' cities is in an entirely different form now. One inherits the product and has to learn how to use it, rather than gaining the land and being required to create a space to live in. Dirty resourcefulness gets pushed into the orbits around the cities, and 'diy' gets imported for maintenance.

Without sounding nostalgic or like i'm lamenting a by-gone era, there are of course still frontiers left in NY City. The redefinition of the interiors whose facades define the ageless face of Gotham, and the spatial interpretation of all the veins and tissue that help balance such a place remain a challenge and a truly exciting temporary space in one of the most 'permanent' cities in the world.

Fifteen years ago when I first was able to visit New York City, I would stare at some of the abandoned buildings and crenellating public spaces and wonder what they were like when they were first built, when their purpose was fully realized, and their order of things was functioning and established. Now, those same buildings have houses, new factories, theatres, cafes, retail, and a litany of other repurposes ensuring their existence. So much so that, like striving for a sense of frontierism in a finished place, you wonder if any shadows still exist. Any dark corners that haven't been swept up or tidied yet.

Above all, BEAT LIFE

Dancing Kings and Queens

For the moment of coordination to have arrived, when ones limbs can move independently of one another, is a great gift. Some people use it to their advantage, and some use it to please themselves. I may have reigned in the flail enough to keep time, but I don't think i'll ever learn to move like them. I guess i'll have to dance, then, on my own.

CHERRY BEACH

After nearly 4 years of deliberating, Career Suicide has finally reached an accord and have properly released the Cherry Beach e.p. With the exception of "Double Life," the four songs that appear on this record have been written for what feels like an eternity. Whatever the last song on this record is called (shows what I know) is so old, it's first iteration was committed to tape in the same session that produced the split 12" with Jed Whitey. Now that's old! That session also produced a shimmering Real Kids inspired powerpop song that I can only assume is permanently lost. Jazzmasters, Telecasters, Marashalls, and HiWatts were used. If you can crack the mountain of insanity that is the archive at Audoilab Studios in Toronto, perhaps you should find it and bootleg it.



Moving on, this record was originally released in very limited quantity to coincide with our UK/Ireland tour in 2008. A very storied summer indeed, and actually, one of the best CS tours ever, if not one of the most fun i've been on, period. So to update and make relevant the reproduction of our past efforts, we re-recorded the two songs that appeared there, included two new ones, and did the whole thing up in an actual studio with the Master of Loudness himself, Jon Drew. One of these tunes (same on that was demo'd during the JW session) is definitely a different feel than we're used to and has been through many comparative strokes. I think I originally wrote it to sound a bit like "I Don't Wanna Go Out" by Australia's X crossed with Wire but has thus been referred to as:

-Sex Pistols Song
-Rap Song
-Anarcho Song
-Killing Joke Bridge
-Boring

ENJOY.

It's an honour to work with Dirtnap, and a pleasure knowing that these old-arse tunes finally have a good home.

Go to careersuicidehc.blogspot.com to check out a track, or visit the Dirtnap Records website to get more info.

UPDATE:

Hey Toronto,

We're giving you the opportunity to support 2 great local record stores that have been really good to us over the years...

We just got a mystery shipment from Dirtnap records of red vinyl editions of the Cherry Beach EP. We're not sure how many were pressed, but there can't be many (we'll post on here when we sort it out)... to make things even more stupidly rare, we numbered 6 of the red vinyl records and split them between Hits and Misses and Rotate This.

HERE'S THE CATCH...
The records are available right now at the stores, BUT you need to spend at least $25 at one of the shops to get to buy the red vinyl Cherry Beach EP. Yeah, we know record store day was last month, but screw Hallmark holidays! Also, we're a bit slow and didn't think of this until now.

So, go buy some records... then ask them for a copy of the "red vinyl" Cherry Beach EP (which should be 6.99 and waiting for you behind the counter). First come, first served ...1 per customer, yadda yadda, gabba gabba hey!

Hits and Misses: 799 Queen St West
Rotate This: 801 Queen Street West

Love,
Career Suicide

Beat Life for Rock Sound Vol. 2

HERE is another snippet of tour diary overload about Japan.

Farewell Mad Men

On April 2nd, 2011, the band Mad Men -- which has nothing to do with the television show of the same name -- played their 10th and final show. The previous 9 and former existence of this band spanned six lineups, three years, three cassettes, two continents, two compilations, two mesh shirts, one t shirt, one bootleg, and one official vinyl release.



The germ that birthed the whole mess was a conversation with NJHC luminary Bob Shedd after surfing in Point Pleasant, NJ in 2006. We both agreed that the undergrowth of these fiercely local punk scenes in the 80s kind of lent itself to the most interesting conversation and let the imagination run wild. With the bigger names in punk history, you can dream all you want, but a lot of the visual imagination and folklore is already filled in via all the documentation that went on. Musing about the zebra mussel losers that opened a show in some shore town in NJ, the reaction to the reaction's reaction of punk, is what really got us laughing and talking until four words spilled over: Let's do a band. We named the band "Square Glasses" which is about as nonsense and useless a band name as you can get, fitting for the underachieving fiction of our band. I'd play all the instruments, Bob would sing. The name changed a few months later during a tete a tete with HC magnate, Brandon Ferrel. Thanks Brandon. Needless to say Bob didn't really work out as a vocalist or as a band member, but i'm sure he's happy being the finger that flicked the first domino. Thanks Bob. I still strive towards the effortless accidents and natural "just be" of those bands.

Throughout its existence, there was a passive effort to keep things a little bit secret and out of the spotlight (including still referring to MM in the third person at the hour of the tell-all, as if i'm not involved). As you'll note, the subtext of this blog is "The Humble Narcissist" and perhaps Mad Men were the ultimate first steps out. Be at the centre without being at the centre. The whole ethos of the project was to create something anonymous and 'normal' that would go through the same steps that any other band would have to. A product more of itself than of something else. In 2007, I was in two well known bands, both of which were pretty prolific, and had already done a side project (Pinkeye) to which I was actively credited. Doing a solo project is gimmicky enough, let alone catching up on rest-on-laurels and so in the eternal combat of self vs the projected self, the 'minimalist' approach to Mad Men was born.



Mad Manifesto ver 1.0 -
-Cassettes only
-do not credit yourself directly
-maximum reference to Mental Abuse
-no particularly conventional art/delivery methodologies (within reason)
-garner minimal attention outside of efforts to make a release
-stay local

The first cassette came out during the weekend of Halloween 2007, and took about a week to get rid of one way or another. 7 months later we played our first show in Brooklyn, NY at an after party for Systematic Death, with an all American lineup. Rule six completely broken.
The second cassette was released the very same night.



Mad Manifesto ver 2.0
-10 show (or less) expiry date

Fitting that after one performance the end was already in sight, but I thought that the temporary restrictions of the band would make it work harder to be more of a special thing without diluting what it had to offer. Like i said, other projects I was involved in were arguably overseasoning the meal with countless releases and tours (all in stride these days) and so a laid back approach was probably best. Plus, if things burnt out fast there'd be time for the next project, and if they took too long at least there would be a way out. Knowing the day you die is also a good reason for people to get involved/interested...assuming you're going to give them something worth living for.

Show 1 - Government Warning + Parsons and Jonah minus Kenny
Show 2 - Ditto
Show 3 - Omegas + Jonah
Show 4 -Jonah on drums/vocals, Jon Sharron, Ben Cook, Justin Smalls
Show 5-10 aka the real Mad Men - Jonah, Jon, Ivan, Ben, Erik
Wildcard (another rule broken): St Louis w/the Abused - Rob Ruz, Ben Smith, Andrew Diaz, JF, a guy who time forgot.

Mad Manifesto ver 2.5
-it's O.K. to be on a compilation



Compilations, bar a few, are generally the landfill of any musical output. The regional compilation is something different. A regional compilation is like a well timed photograph. Do it right and you've got the most wonderfully composed, interesting, well coloured moment in time captured. Do it wrong and you've developed the photo where everyone is blinking.
Regional efforts almost always focus on the lesser-knowns, and that tends to be where you find the green bits in the desert. They act like a resume or a letter of intent to the music consuming world or maybe like an ad in the back of a newspaper or in Variety. Simply 'something' amongst everything else. So Mad Men were on two compilations, both focusing in some way on Toronto/Southern Ontario: "Toronto's Burning," and "City Limits"

Mad Manifesto ver 3.0
-get over yourself and just do a record



After 3+ years of playing and existing, a bootleg of both demos, and the cat really being out of the bag about who the band was and what the band was, it was time to give up on the artifact ban for Mad Men. The last two songs MM had written were really good, I thought, and deserved better than just a cassette and some poorly ripped mp3s, or Stigma forbid, another bootleg (respect to Noel, regardless...oops!). The ethos of the underachiever had to go out the window a little bit as well, but not so much that the previously shattered 'stay local' rule couldn't be patched together for the single official Mad Men release on Slasher Records. Depending on who you talk to, and whether or not they were in the Slasher Records club, this choice might also fall into the underachiever category ;)

So there you have it. An extended description of Mad Men with a few images to help it along. As a reward for making it through this post, HERE is the official Mad Men mixtape, to be released by me, forthcoming.

Here's the tracklist:

SUSPIRIA (orig. by Goblin)****
NOT (orig by NYC Mayhem)*
NO GODish (orig by Mental Abuse)*
COUNTERFEIT TR...*
GO FOR IT (Orig by Chronic Submission)**
TOO HOT Clevo Intro***
TOO HOT**
AWAKENNOT**
SLAPPED IN THE FACE (Orig by NY Hoods)***
WAX WORLD***
NO MIND***
MAD MAN***
AWAKENING***
SQUARE GLASSES***
COUNTERFEIT COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR***

****exclusive
*Live at Sneaky Dees Sept 10/09 recorded by MTM
**Rehearsal Tape at E.E.R. mid '09
***Live at Sneaky Dees 3/25/10 recorded by MTM

BYEBYE

Photos by MTM, the author, Sarde Harde. Original artwork by Ryan Hogan