LIKE THE OLD PUNK ROCKER SAID

jacob shelton and daniel biggins

the seduction

Another cycle around the sun, circled twelve times by the moon, 365 turns of Earth spiraling through what? Nothingness? Future? Space? Illusion? Cycles within cycles. I've seen my life in seven year cycles. They flow so evenly into the next, it takes awhile to see in retrospect. I've been aware of the seven year cycles long enough to have seen the changes and how seamlessly one flows into the next. The cycles are not evident until you notice them. It's been five years in this present cycle. The cycle started same year as I took up writing this daily blog. It was the next thing. It just happened. One day talking with friend of many years in her office, she said I should do a blog. What's a blog? She didn't really know, her daughter told her about blogs. She  told me how to connect with blogspot. I thought about it overnight. I liked the idea that everybody can have a forum to write for, arrange pictures for, make photographs for, speak your meaning without editors and sponsors. Freedom to write and not have to deal with publishers, contracts and money. I like especially that it's not about money in any way. I don't want advertisers and they don't want me. Early in this cycle, I made videos of bluegrass and old-time shows, put them on youtube and wrote about them. Now I'm making video at punk concerts and writing about them. It seems strange, but I see old-time fiddle and banjo music the same as acoustic punk. An old-time string band plays wide open, fast, charging rhythms, rhythms to put dancers on their feet. All the instruments play at the same time, nobody takes a lead and performs solo, nobody emotes physically or vocally. The only part of the body in motion would be forearms and the fingers on the strings.

daniel biggins, jonathan owens, brandon hamby

the seduction

the seduction

Old-time is the pedal-to-the-metal birthplace of rock n roll. Punk has similar driving charge to old-time tunes, though amplified considerably. In old-time, the songs are chosen from a long list of standards. In punk, the bands compose their own songs. My first summer in the mountains, I went to a fiddler's convention in Independence, Virginia, the next town across the state line. I'd been listening to punk a couple years. It was new and fresh. The fire had gone out of the experimental aspect of Sixties rock, which degenerated into REO Speedwagon, bands making pop of an initially experimental music. They rocked, but when I heard them, it was like, been there, done that. I wanted to listen to Patti Smith Group, Nina Hagen Band, the Damned, Generation X. The Sixties taught me to find music I wanted to hear that radio stations didn't play. Drug music was what it meant to them. Sponsors were freaked out by it. Rock was anti-war and conditionally patriotic. Punk came on in the mid-Seventies, seeming to me the natural next thing. The radio wouldn't play punk either, except college stations free of sponsors. It was twenty-five years before punk rose above ground. Billy Idol injected some punk attitude and rhythms into American Metal. It's strange now with punk mainstream. Talking with Daniel on the road to the show in Winston, I said, I only have two friends of my peers I'm aware of, who can tolerate a minute of rock I like to listen to, one in New York and one in Georgia. From here in the woods, high on the mountain where I listen to music, it felt good to be in the company of, surrounded by, with people who share an interest in good ass-kickin rock n roll.

the swamp

bask

I saw self a bit comic in a place where I could be grandpa to most of them and daddy to the older ones, grooving to the music wholeheartedly, music I've listened to longer than most of the people in the Garage had been living. Talking with a woman I met last year at the Milepost in Charlotte, a face so beautiful I felt like I died and this was the angel sent to guide me to heaven, Hayden, girlfriend of the bass player, she blew my mind to smithereens when she told me her mother was once a punk rocker. This coming Saturday, I'll see my friend I've known all her life, Eve, for lunch, whose mother is my New York punk rocker friend. Though my self-consciousness saw self a comic figure, no one else in the place seemed to. Everyone I talked with regarded me with respect I don't get other places. They think it's cool I've listened to punk since the beginning before they were born. Everyone I talked with welcomed me and thanked me for being there. I felt like everybody in the place was my bodyguard. It was the atmosphere. It was so for everyone in the place. All were safe in friendly company, would be helped in whatever ways needed, whatever might happen, immediately. I find punk rockers sincerely friendly, caring people, and not just to me, but all the way around in all their circles. Their styles are individual. To be a hippie, long hair was commandment number one of a long list of codes, evidence of commitment. A punk rocker can, of his own free will, wear a suit and have a barbershop haircut. His style. You're not even required to say dude. Some do. Some don't.

viajando

the seduction

The show Sunday night came to me as a result of a decision made in my late fifties. I heard self start two sentences, the kids these days. Hearing it the second time, I said to self with firm determination, the kind I use when I mean it, set it in motion that moment, this will not happen a third time. I'm done talking that shit. I decided to go to a rock concert of the present moment on my 0 birthdays. For sixtieth, a Papa Roach show at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem. It was what I needed. People packed  in tight, shoulder to shoulder, hopping up and down in place, the band right there in yer face. I got in among the kids these days and found them cool people. For seventieth birthday, Thrice in Charlotte at the Fillmore, and Animals as Leaders. Another situation shoulder to shoulder among the kids these days finding them cool people. By now, I'm drawn to the kids these days because white men my age these days gripe about nothing good on television anymore, opinions from Fake news and rant radio, waiting to die. They bring me down, make me worry that I'm going to die any minute of something, when I really don't care. Ok, I can die any minute. For me, it's not something to dread. I'm so curious about what's on the other side, I have to remind self not to have any accidentally on purpose accidents. I feel like it's the same me on the other side as it is on this side, so why not enjoy this side while I'm here. After the Seduction played, people talking sounded to my ears like they'd inhaled helium. I thought, yeah, just right. My life has opened up since I came to see this side of the veil the same as the other side and allowed it to be. Last year I said I'm going to celebrate every birthday with a concert. Still, three days after, the show Sunday night continues to occupy my mind's eye and ear. It's not involuntary, like buzzing ears, but quite voluntary. I want it in my mind.      

nick brown

viajando

daniel biggins

the seduction

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UNCUT ROCK N ROLL: THE SEDUCTION

the seduction @ the garage

Nothing is more punk than being self-determined

and respecting the self-determination of others.

                                                   --graffiti

I got my rock n roll fix at the Garage in Winston-Salem Sunday night. The place was a powerhouse of energy from 9 til 2. My friend Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, played in a show with three other bands, The Swamp, Bask and Viajando. All played hardcore punk in their own particular take on it. All the bands were good and all the musicians stellar. They were unafraid to make some noise. The band, Viajando, turned their guitars up to screaming, then started. A three-piece band, the guitar was all over the place. The bass gave the guitar a surface to dance on that, itself, was a dance. The bass player's fingers hopped all over the strings and I could hear what he was doing. The sound system was just right. The lead guitar, Nick, played kind-of melodic, abstracted sounds beyond description. Viajando had an almighty drummer, too. He was the vocalist. Talking with him after the show, while the bands were packing instruments and electronic equipment into their vans, I asked him the source of their name, Viajando. He said it's Spanish for a journey, they felt like they were on a journey as a band, and they liked the word. I made it a point to express my appreciation to one person in each band, and everybody in the Seduction, through the course of the night between bands. On the road to the show in the van, Daniel played a cd with some music by Bask and Viajando. Taking I-40 into the city, I told Daniel, if this is what we'll be hearing, I am ready. I was anyway. He said they are bands difficult to follow onstage, and he loves it. They make him play all the harder. 

viajando

bask

The van parked in front of the band entrance door, everybody in the band did their part unloading a major sound system in several parts from the trailer and transporting them to the stage area, placing them out of the way, allowing the first band to put their equipment on the stage. Between bands, the band just finished removes their sound equipment, the next band sets up theirs and wires it all together. The beginnings of each of the band's sets, they played sounds they use to check out the system of wires and tunings. I loved it. It brought to mind an orchestra checking out their tunings before a concert, conditioned intro to some good music. The sounds are quite different, the only likeness being they're the same thing. Each band had their own such intro. By chance, I made video of the Seduction checking out their connections. I thought they were starting the first song and pushed the record button. Catching on that they were checking the sound, I thought, what a waste, then thought, it's digital, no waste, no problem, and thought, wow, this is cool, glad I got this. I stayed near the "merch" table throughout the show, allowing Nolan, who was taking care of the table, a chance to go outside for a smoke from time to time. There was no way I could leave one of the bands once they got going. For my own personal taste in rock, I'm awfully particular about what I listen to, these four bands delivered full satisfaction. I wanted cds by all of them, but only two had cds for sale. Before the show, I spoke with the guy setting up Bask's merch table, who turned out to play guitar and do vocals, and bought their cd. He didn't have many and I didn't want to chance waiting til after the show. Haven't played it yet, but am itching to. To play it now, I would not be able to carry on here until it finished. While they were playing, I felt like a treasure was in my pocket.    

bask

the swamp

The merch table between Bask and the Seduction was the Swamp's section. The guy setting it up and working it turned out to be the vocalist with the Swamp. Like everybody in all the bands, he looked like just another guy who might be in there. His tshirt said, channel your inner catfish. I told him my car's name is Catfish. He told me how he found the shirt. Adam, if I remember correctly. It's his story for him to tell, not me. It's personal, neither vulgar nor intimate. It's his own story, a good one. I enjoyed our brief conversation. As with the guy from Bask, Zeb, it felt like conversation with artists. I already know why, because they are artists. It's the artist in them I appreciate. It's why I was there. They are songwriters. They are musicians, who really are musicians. They compose and arrange songs. It is the art in punk that has drawn me to punk since it's beginnings in the New York Dolls, Patti Smith Group, Nina Hagen Band, the Clash, Richard Hell, a short list. Like punk in London in the Seventies, every band had its own expression. The musicians, the bands make music the way they want to hear music made. Punk is not so much a sound as an attitude. The attitude creates the sound. The attitude is raw American individualism. The code in punk circles, I just want to be myself. The bands playing at the Garage Sunday night were what we call hardcore punk, what I think of as post-Black Flag punk. Punk has evolved infinitely since its beginnings forty years ago. American punk came out of the New York Sixties bands, Velvet Underground, Mothers of Invention and the Fugs. Before them was Bo Diddley and Buddy Holly in the Fifties. Punk has been a line running through rock n roll since the beginning. By now, every city in the country has multiple punk clubs and bands to keep them going every night of the week.   

the seduction

brandon hamby

the seduction

Talking with someone before the show started, I was asked what band I was here for. It came to me from out of the blue. I said, All of them. I want to hear them all. I'm here with the Seduction, to hear them is the reason I'm here, I want to hear all the bands. The Garage is a comfortable place with great sound. I'd seen the Seduction back in September in awe of what I heard then, a giant step beyond their previous cd. What I heard Sunday night was a giant step beyond last September. I don't know where I could put my finger on what has improved about them. Their delivery, their approach to the songs, their extensive stage experience since then. I can't say more or better of anything than before. It felt like it was a fuller sound, a flow from familiarity with what they're doing, their flow with each other evident in their music making. It's what they do on weekends while they work full-time all week. Jacob's bass I did not hear in September like I heard this time. He was cranked up loud, his noting fingers jumping all over the strings. I felt like the playing of all four of them has freed-up somewhat. Not that it didn't have freedom before, they flowed together. The sound was so good I could hear each of them, individually, and the whole band at the same time. It was loud, too. Just right. The drums, I felt were stronger than before. Everybody in the band has more power than before, they're stronger, like Jonathan Owens, the drummer. Perhaps this is what I hear that makes me feel they've taken a step I can't put my finger on. It takes time to build up the physical strength, the stamina, for what they do. The drummer is an athlete. He is stronger and more practiced than he was eight months ago, like everybody else in the band. I like this band, like what they're doing, like the band members, four very different individuals together making a dynamic entity called rock n roll. I like their hope.  

jacob shelton and daniel biggins

the seduction

the garage

drummer with the swamp

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