The "Stockholders' Report" appeared on vermiform.com from 2000 to 2003.
BORK 'EM!
1/15/01
This Saturday's inauguration ends the 74 day
post-election waiting period for my Nader button. The somber Helvetica "Ralph"
will officially switch over from proper noun to more appropriate, finger-down-the-throat
exclamation. This is the lonesome trail taken by the word "Bork"
fourteen years ago, another rare name-to-verb political conversion (Charles
Boycott made the same trip a hundred years earlier). Robert Bork the man -
denied his cushy Supreme Court post after hostile Senate confirmation hearings
- became Bork the action. "Borking" now means something; the partisan
attack of conservatives by liberals. Use of the word generally implies a deep
contempt for the rudeness of any political process that dares question rabidly
right wing political appointees. Papa Bush's man John Tower got his ass Borked
two years later (although his undoing was less overtly political than for
being a crumpled, womanizing sot who resembled a perfect cross between WC
Fields and Benny Hill). The ghost of Bork was hung over Clarence Thomas'
hearings in 1991. The word has fallen on hard times during the Clinton years...
Borking, by definition, seems to be a misfortune that can only befall conservatives.
So it with great relief that I can announce the opening of the first Borking
season of the new century with tomorrow's congressional hearings of Attorney
General candidate John Ashcroft. Ashcroft's from the old school of leathery,
hardbitten sons of bitches and is himself expected to tack Borkward - that
is, to not back down from any statements or stances and generally dish up
the red meat for his right wing buddies. Chances are he'll make it where Bork
got Borked - as of Saturday, Republicans will again hold the tiebreaking vote
in the Senate.
But Borking has deeper, cultural overtones,
and on this front much ground has been lost by conservatives. The country
is a far ruder place than the one the Bushes last controlled. In 1990, 2 Live
Crew was the most controversial band on a major label. Barbara Bush's complaints
about the incivility of "The Simpsons" only ten years ago stands
out as the baroque prattle of a former century. Last week the highbrow New
York Times forum on "Borking Ashcroft" received postings about "Borking"
Brittney Spears. The publisher of the New York Times recently attended a Halloween
party in a "penis nose" disguise. America has become a giant Spencer's
Gifts. Who could have imagined, at the start of the 90's, that Senate Majority
Leader Bob Dole would end the decade as a boner pill salesman? That stores
cautiously carrying Ren & Stimpy puppets with euphemistically named "underleg
noise" would be doing brisk business in plush
turd dolls by '99? That characters could say "shit" on prime
time TV? Or (as I witnessed last fall) that general citizens would wear "Fuck
You" t-shirts in airports? Or that cum shots would be included in R-rated
movies?
A lot of these milestones can be blamed on the vague
fog of "culture wars", but the last cannot. Monica Lewinsky's stained
dress was documented before the films "Happiness" or "There's
Something About Mary" were released, and it was the Starr Report that
alerted third graders to the existence of adult fluids. Republicans have been
churning out the anti-Clinton, Reno-as-lesbian, Hillary-as-castrating-bitch
kitsch for the last eight years, and as of Saturday the horrific genie of
cultural depravity that they themselves helped loose will have a new cast
of targets.
Bork the man emerged a twisted old troll from Bork
the experience. His 1997 book Slouching Towards Gomorrah rails against
a "degenerate" America with too much freedom on its hands. In various
chapters he calls for "law based on morality", blasts popular culture,
"radical individualism" and "radical egalitarianism" and
even questions the legitimacy of the same Supreme Court who admissions test
he flunked a decade earlier. How beautiful is it, then, that this man's surname
will live long after him as the sexually suggestive code word for the defeat
of all he holds dear? Bork ahoy!
DIMINISHING RETURNS
1/22/01
Men's Recovery Project convened on Thursday for the
first time since last summer's catastrophic U.S. tour. A portion of the recording
budget for their new LP ("Night Pirate", due later this year on
Kill Rock Stars) was used to fly singer S. McPheeters from California to Rhode
Island's T.F.Green airport. Drummer G. Mudge of Virginia caught the flight
up from Baltimore. Guitarist N. Burke crammed everyone and their luggage into
his '82 Toyota Tercel and the band drove three hours north to Lund Recording
Studio in York County, Maine. Also crammed into the Toyota were; a Mackie
1604 mixing console, an ART tube compressor, a Boss GE7 EQ, a Korg G5 synth
bass, which Burke says is "rare", a Roland R8 Human Rhythm composer,
a Zoom 505 effects processor, a Zoom ST-224 sampler, the beloved Juno 106
keyboard with its keys still faintly marked in the four note configurations
McPheeters struggled to perform live (but NOT the more impressive Korg Poly-6
keyboard which took a bad fall in Delaware 3 years ago and was vomited on
last spring), a DOD FX 25B envelope filter, a Digitech PDS1550 Programmable
distortion, the Korg EA1 synthesizer, a Digitech PDS 800 Echo Plus, a Roland
SPD-20 Total Percussion Pad, the Roland KD-7 kick drum, including a long piece
of wood for carpet use, a Good Stuff "Finger Beatz" unit, two Radio
Shack studio monitors that Burke insisted were "top notch", a Carven
DC200 electric guitar, a G&L SB1 electric bass, the Toshiba Satellite
2595CDS laptop, which was set up strictly for show, a Shure SM 57 microphone,
an Atlas Sound mic stand with weighted base, the TR606 drum machine, repeatedly
referred to as a "classic " and for which the coveted "young
people rubbing themselves" gesture was made by Burke, despite its not
being used in the recording, and the Midi Man USB sport 2x2 Midi interface
box that, according to Mudge, "sucked".
By Friday night, recording was well underway and the
group had run into the Law Of Diminishing Returns. This is the economic threshold
that, once passed, has overall productivity declining in direct proportion
to the amount of labor inputted. If a band records ten songs, for example,
on a thousand dollar recording budget, each song is worth a hundred dollars.
But the eleventh song pushes the per-track cost down to $90.91, and the twelfth
song is only worth $83.33. Soon enough, every track is worth noticeably less
than the last, spurring a general decline in song quality. A large ravioli
dinner was held to discuss the problem. Eventually the more pressing issue
was raised of how President Clinton should spend his final 16 hours as the
most powerful man on Earth (all agreed on a basic "nude & aroused
stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue" approach).
The band slept through inauguration morning but made
good headway on Saturday afternoon. A group discussion was held on the strange
quality of microphone popper stoppers to catch the plosive "P" but
not the more common sibilant "S". McPheeters did the usual bellyaching
about his ragged voice in a comical hoarse whisper. The next morning a vocal
stalemate was broken. A large lunch was eaten and by Sunday night the band
had a record, with dummy tracks mentally inserted as the low end Diminished
Return songs. Equipment was disconnected and packed. A side discussion was
held on the relevance of M.R.P. in a post-Clinton world, and a strange silence
ensued.
On Monday morning the gear was again carefully stacked
in the Tercel and the band set off for Rhode Island to go their separate ways.
But time was made for one stop. Passing through the sleepy town of Biddeford,
the band managed to locate the courthouse where George W. Bush was arraigned
after his 1976 drunk driving arrest. A suspicious young man was shoveling
slush off the front steps in a bright orange safety vest. "Just tourists",
assured McPheeters, and the snow shoveling city employee agreed to take two
group pictures in front of the courthouse with Burke's camera. The band thanked
the young man and roared off towards route 95.
BALD MILESTONES
1/29/01
I've conveniently scheduled all the weird anniversaries
for January just to get them out of the way. Fifteen years ago yesterday the
space shuttle blew up. Ten years ago yesterday the Gulf War was raging. Ten
years ago yesterday also marks the birth of Vermiform, Inc, at least in the
sense that Pinocchio was finally "born" as a real boy. It wasn't
an easy delivery. The third ad I'd put together (for the Born Against EP,
VMFM 1) featured a photo of a screaming toddler waving an American Flag, taken
from a USA Today that'd been lying around. At the bottom of the ad I'd absentmindedly
scrawled "patriotism = " with a small hand-drawn swastika. I ran
the thing a few times in MaximumRocknRoll and forgot about it. A few
months later MRR's editor, Tim Yohannon, called me. "I just got
a nasty phone message from an attorney representing the mother of the kid
in your ad. He says they're going to sue us, and you, and Don Fury [we'd recorded
at Don's studio and he'd had the misfortune of plugging us as one of his clients
in the same MRR] and The Associated Press!" I was 21 and - for
the first of several times in the history of this label - facing a threat
far beyond my capacity. I asked in a terrified whisper what should be done.
"Nothing," Tim said, chuckling. "Just don't sign for any registered
letters and maybe the problem will go away." I talked to Don Fury the
next day and he didn't sound quite as amused. But none of us signed for any
registered letters and, sure enough, the problem eventually went away.
Meanwhile, I incorporated. American tax law grants
incorporated businesses the same legal status as an individual, shielding
the owner of the company from direct liability in the case of, say, statistically
implausible lawsuits stemming from fanzine ads. The whole thing was arranged
in a sterile office on the top floor of a Secaucus, NJ law firm. The presiding
lawyer met me in the lobby, took me to his office and, like a hazy nightmare,
confided that he wanted to "jump" his secretary. I stared out his
window at a horizon of stale marshes. A social security number was created
for this new entity. 100 corporate shares were issued and stored in an unseen
vault. They resembled diplomas from an especially prestigious high school.
Feelings of paternal pride briefly swelled. Weeks later, during the weird
interval of war, my official deed arrived. Like the adoption papers for a
Cabbage Patch kid, the whole thing felt at once heartwarming and disturbingly
tacky.
I think of the kid from that ad every now and then,
roughly the same age as this label. Did his having an overly litigious mom
help or hinder his development? Years later, some snotty whelp outed Vermiform's
status as a corporation in the letters section of MRR (I'd already
done the job myself in a 1992 Profane Existence interview), righteously
quoting certain Born Against lyrics in the wrong context. Tim wrote a polite
response, clearing up some of the mysteries of corporate tax law and why it
was sometimes beneficial for record labels to take this approach. Were these
two kids one and the same? Considering the plodding, 4th grade level of irony
that seems to lubricate all of existence, the answer seems kinda obvious.
NSP01
Feb 12, 2001
The New Success Program '01 was launched last week.
This program consisted of my auctioning off a good chunk of the LP collection
I transported 2,800 miles from storage in upstate New York. Southwest Airlines
allows passengers three pieces of stowed luggage at 70 pounds each. I managed
three poorly taped boxes at 68 pounds each (some of the B's had to be left
behind). Mothballed for over a year, these records seemed even less vital
to my life after I'd lugged them across the airport concourse. The lady at
the counter pursed her lips and made me sign a damage waiver. Once in the
air, back and shoulders aching, I hatefully pictured the boxes spilling open
in the hold, unsleeved vinyl sloshing around in turbulence, rare hardcore
albums gracefully raining down on the midwest.
I don't regret the actual selling of these artifacts
- almost every obscure punk & new wave record ever pressed is available
on CD these days. I save my remorse for the wretched nickel & dimeyness
of online record auctioning. A lot of pandering to the lowest common denominator
comes with this territory. After several hours of cataloguing skips, scratches
and surface scuffs left me a cheaper, smaller man. The Shift/F7 thesaurus
was frequently summoned. I tried noting 1/32 inch seam splits, but my sarcasm
didn't seem to translate.
Also, steering clear of eBay's "Shill Bidding"
rules is tough. It's ok, kind of, for a friend to bid in one's auction. If
that friend is genuinely interested in the items. If they act in collusion
with the seller, or bid with the intent of inflating prices, or hold some
shade of doubt in their heart, the transaction may be illegal. Not covered
in the rules is what I should do if that friend comes over to my house, drinks
half a bottle of Captain Morgan's spiced rum, logs on to my computer and starts
drunkenly bidding for items, intent unknown. No! I pleaded, already
internalizing the pettiness of my oppressors, They can trace the cookies!
They'll cancel my auction! How did it get this far?
I made out as well as can be expected. A lot of Italian
and Japanese hardcore sold well. I didn't have many German bands this time
around, so I'm not sure if this was some post-Axis trend. My remaining albums
have been winnowed to resemble the kind of record collection one might see
in a freshman's college dorm - The Police, Jimi Henrix, The Beatles. A slight
transfer of wealth from the gods of colored vinyl to the gods of unpaid production
bills is pending.
LOOTING AND REALM MINGLING
2/19/01
This was supposed to be the final weekend to binge
at the Napster smorgasbord, one last free-music looting spree in the face
of imminent legal doom... the end of an era, as 21 month spans are now called.
And it is the end of an era, although not remotely in the way that the big
5 record labels want it to be. Napster's looming ruin (or at least radical
retooling) will mark the first and probable last time the music industry will
have someone to sue over the issue of free downloadable music. Like the menacing
broom shards in "Fantasia", Napster's collapse opens the door for
its 60 million customers to start trading mano a mano. Direct filesharing
is already possible under OpenNap (which, as free software, offers no one
to sue except the people doing the sharing - otherwise known as the music
industry's own market). Upcoming software and connections are already rendering
the "content ownership" portion of the music industry's reign economically
irrelevant, forcing new business plans.
Napster's own launch also marked the end of a different
kind of era. There was once an age when one could be in a band and safely
write, record and release whole albums of material entirely unknown to their
own family. This was the era of Comfortable Compartmentalization, and the
luxury of that time is gone forever. I date its passing to Christmas 1994,
when many of my friends returned home for the holidays to the horror of their
entire extended clan gathered around the computer screen, wee cousins and
ripe grandparents alike. Painstakingly concealed details of one's band life,
many of us learned, could now be unearthed in seconds with the click of an
AOL icon. This new era, the age of Total Family Disclosure has been a difficult
time for some. Who wants to have their realms mixed without prior consent?
Recorded music is, after all, just a subset of intellectual
property. And intellectual property is like furniture that can't be stolen.
If a record you appear on goes missing from your own collection, you can always
find a copy at a friend's house. If your band's been lucky, you might be able
to find another copy at a record store. Peer-to-peer song filesharing finalized
this concept. From 1999 on, one could count on the inscribing of their recorded
music, by sheer virtue of being recorded music, in the global Book Of Life.
A system designed by the Defense Department to insure survivability of government
documents after a nuclear war now also insures survival of one's songs after
a nuclear war, somewhere, on someone's hard drive.
But intellectual property can also be like flawed
furniture, the couch with the bad leg that hobbles after you forlornly. Artists
with regrettable songs that were regrettably posted online are wishing a recall
could be as easy as cramming all the toothpaste back in the tube. For every
"Smile" LP (Beach Boys) that was successfully self-quarantined,
there are 10,000 outtakes, flubbed live tracks or demo versions of songs that
were never meant to see the light of day. Musicians with unripe earlier work
(or, uh, who said dumb things between songs at live shows) now have to face
the music. Usually their own, following them in ghostly files from terminal
to terminal.
NATURAL CAUSES
March 19, 2001
Afghanistan's ruling Islamic militia, the Taliban,
pulled a weird bit of PR jujitsu this week, declaring, after the fact, that
the recent destruction of the giant, approximately 1,400 year old stone Buddhas
of Bamiyan was not, as previously announced, a solemn duty of faith but instead
nothing more than a momentary spasm of rage brought on by the perceived condescension
in the United Nations' offer of hard cash to preserve the relics. Essentially,
the destruction of the Buddhas is now being blamed on the very people who
tried to save the Buddhas. "When your children are dying in front of
you," said the Taliban envoy, "then you don't care about a piece
of art." Like most Talibanic contortions, the complaint doesn't really
make sense, but the leverage in this particular rationale is strangely rational
- the hypocrisy of the UN in condemning the destruction of inanimate objects
while turning a blind eye to the destruction of the Afghan people. Since the
Taliban took power less than 3 years ago, the new government has denied jobs
and basic medical service to all twelve million Afghan women, hanged prostitutes,
stoned adulterers, banned TV and shaving and made displaced Afghans the world's
largest body of internal refugees. And while it's not entirely fair to blame
UNESCO (which, as the UN cultural agency, can only be concerned with the preservation
of artistic artifacts) for the lopsided reaction of the west, it is kind of
disheartening to read that the UN is calling for "new international laws
to punish cultural vandalism" while the far graver human rights outrages
get no such attention.
Also - isn't 1,400 years kind of a long run for any
human artifact? After all, the world's largest Buddha (it'll be three times
taller than the Statue of Liberty), currently under construction in Bodhgaya,
India, is only expected to last a millennium. Albert Speer, architect of the
Third Reich, envisioned imperial Berlin as nothing more than weed choked ruins
after the thousand year mark. Not to be blasé about the Afghan Buddha
explosions, but hey - nothing lasts forever. Machu Picchu, the lost Inca city
of Peru, is on the verge of sliding down a mountain. The net result of both
forms of ruin remains.... ruin. Shouldn't human folly be considered as random
a factor as natural disaster, erosion and decay? If so, then perhaps the builders
of the new Buddha colossus should start hedging their bets now. The greatest
threat to their new statue could come not from the extremes of a thousand
rainy seasons, but from Scientologists and Rastafarians, two religions that
are roughly the same age as Islam was when the Afghan Buddhas were erected.
If Afghanistan has had three rulers in just the last ten years, who knows
who will control upper India by 3001?
The Taliban also announced the slaughter of 100 cows
to atone for their delay in destroying the statues. Unlike the hundreds of
thousands of cows that have been "destroyed" to ward off foot and
mouth disease in the west this last month, this meat was distributed to the
region's poor and hungry. I'm not quite sure what the parallel is here, but
I'm sure there is one...
NOTES ON THE 2001 MORDAM CONVENTION
July 30, 2001
The annual Mordam Records' convention was held this
last Saturday in Sacramento's Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge # 2.
The Lodge is housed in an unassuming bit of strip mall, just across a weed
choked lot from an exotic plants store that seemed untroubled by customers.
A mounted photo inside the hall's break room featured two dour men with nineteen
century neckbeards. A caption below explained that the Odd Fellows' organization
had been established in August 1849 "to relieve the sick and bury the
dead". Nearby photos commemorated the balls, parade floats and various
Shrineresque charity functions that had transpired since.
The unspoken theme of this year's convention was Massive
Frugality. That the convention was even being held in Sacramento was the direct
result of the Lookout Records defection nine months earlier. Faced with a
25% income loss and priced out of the tech-swollen San Francisco real estate
market, Mordam wisely removed itself to the land where billboards for Miller
Genuine Draft still outnumber those addressing Linux issues. Taken with the
loss of the Dead Kennedy's back catalog, the Lookout shortfall has abruptly
opened a new chapter for Mordam. As with past conventions, representatives
from Mordam's nearly fifty distributed labels gathered in two large meeting
rooms to talk shop (the proceedings only occasionally punctuated by the conversational
overlap through cloth covered room dividers). And, as with past conventions,
the usual topics - marketing, the problem of a strong dollar in foreign markets,
which records "stick to the wall", updated buying patterns of "the
kids"- were dutifully addressed. But those few labels with deep pocketed
constituencies were holding their good luck tales close to the vest.
The climactic third act convened after lunch. This
was the "Major Labels / Advertising" discussion in the 1:30 - 3:00
time slot. A long discussion ensued on the role of Mordam's slight intersections
with the five major music companies and whether or not a long standing ban
on engagement was still relevant. These conventions seem doomed to relive
the same arguments every few years or so. Nine new staff members and a half
dozen new labels guaranteed much revisiting of ground previously fought over.
To those who hadn't endured such discussions, the urge to filibuster ran strong.
Hit List editor Jeff Bale orated in the style of a man who had cornered
his kids' friends in the kitchen with a lecture about the sixties. Newcomers
repeatedly opened their remarks with the brutal phrase "I just wanna
say....". Although the first Mord-Con of the 21st century lacked the
wrath of the late Tim Yohannon on this issue, all the elements of squabble
survived intact. Towards the end of the discussion, the name of The Cramps
was repeatedly invoked as an example of how major labels betray their artists.
Which occasionally bordered on the awkward, since Ivy & Lux from the Cramps
were present for the entire argument (their new label, Vengeance, was picked
up by Mordam last June), at times seemingly bemused by all the fuss.
The convention let out promptly at 5. The center hall
was found to be packed with small boys in cummerbunds and teenage girls in
pink dresses inhaling helium balloons. The Rollins family of Sacramento had
rented the third meeting room for a banquet, and the lodge manager politely
requested that the Mordam party clear the way. By 5:15, all evidence that
the convention had ever transpired had been erased, and the wedding party
presumably made merry long into the night.
FIGHTING THE WORMS AND MAGGOTS
8/13/01
Last month, while I was out of town at the Mordam
Convention and thus defenseless, a stranger named "Terri" sent the
following email; " Hi! How are you? I send you this file in order to
have your advice. See you later." My lone employee Anthony opened the
attached document and I don't blame him for the hubbub that followed. Not
many people know the golden rule of ouija boards and file attachments; clumsily
spelled names are a telltale sign of the evil wraith attempting entry into
the human world. "Terri" turned out to be the popular W32.SirCam
virus (technically a worm). Sir Cam proceeded to roll its little shopping
cart down the dusty aisles of my computer, no doubt whistling a hateful little
tune as it plucked items from their proper places. It sent random documents
from the hardrive to random friends in my address book. In my browser cache
it found more addresses and proceeded to email more random documents to absolute
strangers. When I returned on the 31st, I noted dumbly that the little green
DSL light on the back of the unit was chugging away, even though I wasn't
online.
On the 1st I started receiving returned email from
nonexistent persons. It took a few hours to grasp the severity of the problem.
If 57 letters were returned from bad addresses, how many were sent to good
addresses? Several strangers wrote demanding to know why I had emailed them
the paltry "plopgate" column from last February. A friend in Seattle
was sent a spreadsheet of people's birthdays (I checked and hers made the
list). The webmaster at "nofx.com" was sent a list of potential
short story first sentences I'd written over the years. The office of the
governor of West Virginia was sent a file I'd rather not discuss. Computer
sickness inevitably draws metaphors with human sickness, especially the ugly
belief - usually unspoken with humans - that the infected must've been careless
to get infected in the first place. But this one's not my fault! When Napster
posted that the only virus one could catch using their service "is the
one that will affect your mind, body and soul", I took great pains not
to catch that one either! And this is the thanks I get?
Consequently: my August site revisions are going to
take a while. Until I get the harddrive scrubbed clean and rebuilt I stay
offline. Just the act of posting this very update will cost me. Last week
I logged on long enough to correct a few live show dates, about six minutes.
Later that day I found another 4 messages from infected users, including a
"DIE MOTHERFUCKER" from someone I've never met. It's strange writing
this, knowing that an evil intruder is in here somewhere, peering over every
keystroke. Why, Terri?
_________________
Dave from the Rah Bras reports that his bass guitar has gone missing. It was last seen on July 7 and foul play is suspected. Dave describes the disappeared instrument as "a total rip off viola bass Paul Mccartney hofner look-a like thing. It says 'Royal Artist' up where you turn the things to make the strings tighter. It has gold screws where the neck hooks up to the body on the back. And it is a hollow body bass. It has a reddish-yellowish sunburst look... and has some black on it. The volume knob is big and silver and could be mistaken for a old TV knob." Dave adds, "If you run into the person that has it... and you can't take it by force... just nicely ask them to return it to me (COD if they like), at David NeSmith, PO Box 4934, Richmond, VA 23220." This is where it seems appropriate to add a quote from the insert sleeve of the first Blast LP, sound counsel even fifteen years later: "COMPLETE HATRED TO THE FUCKING MAGGOT THAT STOLE DAVE'S BASS (FROM THE BALBOA THEATER IN L.A.) BURN IN HELL YOU SON OF A BITCH!!"
TIME TO FIGHT
1/14/02
Last year's bad numbers are starting to trickle
in for the music industry, and for all of us sluggards and ineptoids and fiscally
unqualifieds in the extreme shallow end of this profession, a ray of vindication
shines forth. It's not our fault! Or at least not directly. The reports are
still confusing. Many levels of badness had already accrued long before September.
Four major independent distributors went belly up in 2001. Many labels - including
the occasionally prestigious Man's Ruin and Grand Royale - went out of business.
A disturbing 83.2% spike in the sales of New Age albums is, as of this writing,
unaccounted for. And the top 3 songs of 2001, according to radio airplay monitor
Broadcast Data Systems, were by Staind, Train and Lifehouse.... three obviously
fictitious band names. Who is behind this??
Last May, Billboard ran some sobering figures pulled from
the previous year's SoundScan data. In 2000, 71.1% of all albums were on independent
labels, over 200,000 titles. Even with the smallest of pressings (1,000 per),
this means the birth of over two hundred million new objects in just that
one year and for just that one category. But only 16.6% of the cash from album
sales actually went back to these independent labels. And the average sale
for indie labels was only 635 units per title.
There was a time when I would have put that word, unit,
in quotation marks - signifying a certain level of ironic detachment, a knowing
wink to the reader. But I now understand that this attitude may be part of
the problem. There are thousands of identical American independent label owners
suffering an identical level of mushy pride in their own product. It's an
infectious presumption, and one that gets passed up the food chain. Says Chris
Morris, author of the May 12 Billboard article; I'm sure distributors would
like to believe that they are in the sales business, but, if truth be told,
they are in the shipping and receiving business, and the essence of their
game is sending large numbers of unwanted CDs back and forth from one shipping
dock to another. Last October, a Fed Ex truck delivered several thousands
pounds of deleted titles to my garage, where they now age in darkness. The
exactly 666 copies of VMFM 30 that looked so charming on my distributor statements
year after year have now become the physical embodiment of 666 actual records.
Small cartoon stars shoot from my lumbar spine just thinking about it. Unlike
drycleaners, gas stations, supermarkets or banks, independent record labels
are governed largely by emotion - love of their own product. And, unlike most
other businesses, the costs of production have dropped exponentially in the
last decade. But all other economic rules still apply. The results of this
experiment in unchecked manufacturing have been comically disastrous. But
the conclusion is grim. Many of us will have to go out of business so that
others of us may continue to exist.
Me, personally? I just feel wronged. And the next time I
find a Rah Bras CD in the "Clearance" bin at the Virgin Megastore
in Ontario Mills Mega mall? With one of those "All Sales Final"
stickers? Shit. Richard Branson better steer his next balloon trip clear of
this hemisphere.
MRP FINANCES
1/21/02
This has been a slow week, so I've gone ahead and
posted the Men's Recovery Project tour finance totals. Some poor use of credit
cards is reflected here, as well as the majestic power of merchandise in the
life of an unloved band. This spreadsheet probably wouldn't be nearly so funny
if the band hadn't lost so much money. Then again, I wouldn't have posted
it if the band had made anything. Only the shame gets shared.
Disclosure: three tours are not reflected in the net total.
These are;
1) An early excursion through the south, fall 1995. Neil and I rented some monstrous luxury sedan, and the fact that I can't remember the make or model shows the degree to which I neglected bookkeeping in those days. The rest of the band rode with Richmond, VA.'s Hose Got Cable. We made it as far as Chapel Hill, NC where the band played to ten people and was accosted by a drunk man. After the show, Neil called home and learned that his cat, Nunivak, had gotten out of the house and had gone missing. After a quick conference, he and I rode the 5 hours back to Richmond. I spent the next day and a half sulking. Nunivak was eventually found safe and sound under Neil's porch, so we loaded the equipment back into the rental car and drove 17 hours to meet up with the guys in Gulf Breeze, FL. We played three more shows, ate well, then drove back to Virginia. I have no idea what any of this cost. A few months later the drunk man from Chapel Hill called and asked to "weasel pipe" on a few MRP shows. I took me a long while to realize that he was referring to his band, Pipe, and not using some cryptic Carolina indie slang. Just this last year I discovered the Pipe CD in the $1 bin at Rhino records in Claremont, and I make a point of tracking its precise whereabouts in that bin whenever I go record browsing.
2) MRP's 1999 European tour. This tour never actually happened, but costs were incurred. In specific, I logged a good deal of man-hours towards securing a weekend of gigs in Morocco. I wrote Maximumrocknroll for leads. They gave me the email address for Luk Haas, their old international columnist. I reached Haas somewhere in between his journeys to Uganda and Kazakhstan. He gave me the address of a fellow in south France, who passed me along to Majdi in Casablanca. Majdi posted me several letters on beautiful cream colored paper with stamps of the dour king Hasan, writing that he was a "big fan" of Morbid Angel and "many other fucking DEATH/BLACK METAL bands!" Majdi seemed to think that my scheme was a terrible idea and that the band would lose lots of money. MRP continued to insist. I contacted the embassy in NYC and got the visa info, sent Madji $10 for notarization in Casablanca city hall and Madji promptly never wrote me back. A few weeks later we realized we no longer had the cash for plane fare and scotched the whole thing. Four months later King Hasan died.
3) MRP's disastrous 2000 tour, which transcended all rules of finance. My account for the last two years had me losing $1800 on this trip, of which we played less than a third of our scheduled shows. But my records are shaky. It may have been more. Either way, it would have been in very poor taste to try to document any of it.
GRIEF ON MUTE
1/28/02
For those of you not familiar with the greatest
homage to New York ever to pose as a neo-western to pose as an apocalyptic
sci-fi action-flick, I direct your attention to a special screening of 1981's
"Escape from New York" playing at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
this Sunday, January 27th. Oops, you can't go. That's because it was yesterday.
Which means you also won't be able to find me in the second row, head tilted
back, mouth agape for the third and presumably last time I will ever be able
to see this fine film on the big screen.
Audiences at the Egyptian are a special breed. At
any given showing, a normal citizen such as myself can sit surrounded by an
extraordinarily high percentage of writers, editors, producers, gaffers, studio
agents and incognito moguls. This means a certain freedom from the annoyances
that have made most 21st century mall megaplex outings so god damned fucking
intolerable - no rif raff, no screaming babies, no hostile farting or fighting
children or people talking on cell phones during the film (all endured in
the last month, sometimes all at one movie). It's generally a much more appreciative
crowd. But a crowd that nonetheless brings its own fawning irritations...
applause at each character's entrance, loud whispers about the poor quality
of the print.
So the audience cheered most of the opening credits
- Ernest Borgnine, Kurt Russell, Adrienne Barbeau, big hoots and applause
when Isaac Hayes' name came up. And there was laughter at dated references
to 1988 and 1997 in the opening titles. People also laughed during the scene
when Air Force One is hijacked by a terrorist bent on crashing the plane into
New York - mostly at feeble attempts made to break down the cockpit door,
the mechanics of which most Americans are now intimately versed in. But there
was merely silence at the shot of a hijacked jet soaring towards the World
Trade Towers. Having seen this film several dozen times, I had wondered what
a 2002 audience would think of the scene. What could we think of it? Only
when the inevitable Hollywood version of Sept. 11 is made will any movie come
as close to capturing that particular trauma. And since the Californians didn't
laugh at any of the New Yorker insider jokes (like references to the 69th
st. bridge), I doubt anyone felt the same muted heartbreak that I did just
seeing those buildings up on the screen.
When is this feeling going to fade? After the next
siege? The mechanics of mass terrorism probably dictate assaults of increasing
violence separated by longer and longer intervals. Over eight years separated
the first and second WTC attacks. Some of this normality is built on secret
coincidences and luck we rarely have insight into and are powerless to change.
The same presidential pretzel attack that formally ended the Weird Period
could just as easily have gone the other way. Can anyone imagine what the
last two weeks would have been like if the man had choked to death, alone
and unmourned in his private chambers?
Dated science fiction is always more fun after the
expiration date. Discussion of postdated errors was certainly one of the few
tolerable points of the Q&A after the last picture I saw at the Egyptian
(the brutal 5 hour cut of Wim Wender's "Until The End Of the World",
which imagined a 1999 without internet or cell phones). But the repeated interior
and exterior shots of the WTC brought to mind what has occurred in just the
last four and a half months. The Afghan death toll, by all accounts, has now
surpassed the 9/11 death toll. 40,000 New Yorkers, born since September 11,
will rely solely on our accounts of the event. Things continue and accrue.
Just in the last 139 days, Over 400 million new web pages have been posted
to the internet, 33 billion photos have been shot, 800 billion emails have
been sent. The relentless, hallucinatory pace of the planet would have staggered
any sci-fi filmmaker from 1981.
Director John Carpenter answered questions after the
film. He talked some about New York in the 70's, casting decisions, the energy
levels of a 54 year old man. When the inevitable question about 9/11 came,
it was such an obvious fumble that all Carpenter could offer were vague pleasantries.
What was there to say? We left the theater and emerged into the kind of noirish
downpour that seemed to signify something. As of this writing, it is not known
if anyone stayed for the second feature, "Big Trouble In Little China".
MISERY INDEX
2/4/02
Unless something tragic happens in the next 48 hours,
Ronald Reagan will have survived another year. A quiet one, too. Last year's
90th birthday coincided with a serious hip injury, setting off fresh speculation
over the man's coordinates on his long slide into oblivion. Nancy Reagan firmly
denied that Ron had hurt himself trying to stand and salute while overhearing
their gardener whistle "God Bless America". Such is the nature of
Alzheimer's. We never know what's going on in the confines of the Reagan ranch
the same way Nancy never knows what's going on in the confines of the Reagan
brain. All of us can only make educated guesses. This grim image - RWR as
a broken robot, receiving the occasional, faint signal on his damaged transceiver
- highlights the unlikely irony of Reagan's decline. These days it's his friends
and family who wish him a speedy death, his bitterest enemies who toast the
man's longevity. The disease that many of us wouldn't wish on our worst enemy
has befallen the man some of us once considered our worst enemy. Drooling
and diaper jokes can only make so many rounds before both listener and teller
are implicated as cads, or worse.
Alzheimer's is a nasty way to die. So nasty that it's
fair to say Ron has vaulted past the charts of American presidential death
and into the ranks of Top Ten Wretchedest Ends Of National Leaders. This puts
him in the company of Liberia's Samuel Doe (mutilated and tortured to death
on videotape), Ottoman Sultan Osman II (killed by "compression of the
testicles") and Afghanistan's Mohammad Najibullah (tortured, castrated,
dragged from a jeep and hung from a traffic light by the Taliban in 1996).
Humiliating ends. Yet how many of those guys had their own humiliation stretched
out for seven years? According to the national Alzheimer's average, RWR still
has one more year to tough it out. And remember, this is a strong guy, one
who survived cancer, bullets, the Zero Year curse.
I visited the Reagan Presidential Library the week
of his 90th birthday. It's located in Simi Valley, past lush mountainscapes
that're accessible only by the Ronald Reagan Freeway. A lumpy, oversized statue
of the Great Communicator greets tourists at the entrance. In the lobby hung
a wall of birthday cards a New Jersey teacher had forced her 4th grade class
to design and sign. Wandering its halls, one is treated to a rare occurrence
- the life story of a major historical figure, as made physical by that major
historical figure, while that major historical figure still walks the Earth.
All the omissions (any reference to first wife Jane Wyman) and distortions
(nine slim paragraphs on Iran-Contra compete with a wall of presidential china)
are Reagan's own. Oddly, these are the very memories that the disease is in
the process of destroying. The damage would be similar if some huge B-Movie
monster emerged from Santa Monica Bay, lumbered over the 101 and started gnawing
into the timbers and sheetrock of the museum itself.
Alzheimer's follows reverse chronology. First to be
ravaged are the adult relationships and memories. Last to go are early motor
skills and childhood ties. Nancy indirectly confirmed some of Ron's status
in an interview with Tom Brokaw a year ago - "Every once in a while,
he'll talk about Moon, his brother, and his mother, Nelle, and Jack,"
his father. "That's about all now." But not entirely all. The disease
doesn't burn a clear swath. Debris is left, vague impressions, memory flotsam
that drifts and recedes. What fragments on display in his museum must occasionally
surface in Reagan's mind? Campaign commercials? The empty suits in glass cubes?
A white house kleenex dispenser? An old political cartoon of the gipper manhandling
a hippie? The handmade sign in the background of a photo taken in Reagan's
hospital room in 1985, reading so they took part of your intestines!??
The USS Ronald Reagan nuclear aircraft carrier will
debut this Christmas. If RWR makes it to 92, this commissioning will provide
some preview of the impending orgy of grief when he finally goes. We're not
going to get off lightly. There are people afoot who feel that this guy deserves
a Rushmore spot, or his face on the $10 bill, or a monument on the mall in
DC. For once, however, it seems like the whims of mother nature will have
provided everyone with a happy ending - those who will be relieved when the
man's suffering finally comes to an end, and those who believe that, just
for once, the bad guy got what he deserved ten times over...
FF in PHX
2/22/02
Fast Forward drove from Los Angeles to Phoenix, AZ
this last Wednesday for a rare live performance with Olympia, WA.'s Thrones.
This drive, one eighth of the distance across the continental USA, consists
of three parts; 1) a relatively painless stretch past the car dealerships
and strip clubs of the eastern inland valleys, 2) a reverent stop at the General
Patton Museum in Chiriaco Summit, CA, 3) 400,000 hours across the scorched
and insensate desert. Seen along the way; 1) several cryptic groves of headless
palm trees, 2) a billboard featuring a troupe of marching cartoon ducks, reading
"United We Quack To Stamp Out Child Abuse", 3) one unmarked chrome
container truck, reading only "Inedible - Not Intended For Human Food".
The band passed the state line at dusk, the only time zone in the U.S. one
can cross without actually changing times. In Phoenix, banner ads were seen
for the anti-tobacco proposition 200, reading "Secondhand Smoke Kills!".
At various intersections along the route, smaller signs could also be seen
taped underneath each banner with arrows pointing upwards, reading "so
do hot dogs!", "so do cars!", "so do cheeseburgers!"
Joe Preston of the Thrones was already at the club.
He produced a flyer for a show Thrones played with Unwound last month, their
last. Both bands were listed on a tombstone. "They didn't have to list
me on the grave," he said quietly. A young man in a horse poncho arrived.
Some locals recognized Mr. F___ of Fast Forward as the guy who drunkenly found
himself behind the club while looking for the men's room at a different show
last year. A small beam of recognition crossed Preston's face. "Hey...
I played here eleven years ago. This is where I poked a guy in the chest with
my bass."
Fast Forward played at ten. A small bomb had been
constructed with road flares and a stolen alarm clock. By 10:04 the set was
over and Joe found himself stamping out a few pathetic flames on the stage.
In the rush to exit the club, Fast Forward had scattered a stack of flyers
which various concert goers silently picked up and returned to their neat
little piles on the shelf by the door. The flares had filled the room with
a thick sulfur stink. Later, during the Thrones set, Mr. F____ could be seen
at the back of the club, hair mussed. "History," he muttered, quoting
Fidel Castro, "will exonerate me."
FF in NYC
5/27/02
ForceField of Providence, RI - featuring our own
Mr. Brinkman - wrapped up its 3 month run in the 2002 Whitney biennial yesterday.
Sam and Tara Vermiform met up with Neil and Noelle Monoroid in front of the
Whitney on 54th street. The last this gang had such an outing was in 2001,
when the four fit in a trip to Hollywood wax museum in Los Angeles.
Forcefield's piece was located on the 3rd floor. A
room 17 feet high had been converted into a walk-in diorama of life sized
creature-mannequins, like the historical armor exhibition across town at the
Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, perhaps a thousand years from now. A few
small monsters were placed around the periphery. Several beasts the size of
European automobiles could be seen lurking in the background. Neil Burke had
hand screened the thousands upon thousands of sheets that covered the back
walls and ceiling and he seemed to droop a bit taking it all in. Serious old
ladies could be seen writing force field in their little notebooks.
Matt Brinkman himself arrived after twenty minutes, looking dazed by civilian
life. It turned out that Matt had been standing in the exhibit, in full costume,
much the same way Vincent Price had once posed in his own diorama at the Hollywood
wax museum, scaring passers by, and retreating, like Brinkman, through a tiny
secret door.
The gang wandered for a while. Sam did his best to
follow the rules of open mouthed bubble gum chewing (OK in rooms of framed
photographs fine, not OK fine in rooms of 18th century paintings), the result
of several incidents of things flying out of his mouth. Despite bad press
and a few distinct stinkers, there were some great pieces here; Ken Feingold's
bald Caucasian heads with moving mouths and eyes, talking to each other in
computerized monotones from a cardboard box filled with packing peanuts ("Do
you think we'll die?"), the "Holy Artwork" video installation
collaboration between performance artist Christian Jankowski and San Antonio's
Harvest Fellowship Church, John Leanos' fictional archeological artifacts,
Robert lazzorini's incredible elongated payphone complete with stickers and
stains. The best piece of the show belonged to mad genius Miranda July, who
had recorded a 20 minute loop that ran in the massive elevators. Sam rode
the lift until he found himself alone with the recording, watching strangers
listen to her dramas in pieces as the elevator moved from floor to floor,
sometimes talking amongst each other in small groups; "I think I saw
one of them move!" "Ooh, which one was it?"
GREAT CHEWOUTS
2/3/03
The dressing down given to failed Shoe Bomber Richard Reed in a Boston courthouse this last week was a rare treat, perhaps the only time I will feel admiration for a U.S. district judge. Once sentenced, Reid delivered a rambling freakout that produced this exchange:
REID: Your government has sponsored the torture of Muslims in Iraq, and Turkey,
and Jordan and Syria with their money and weapons!
JUDGE YOUNG: …You see that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United
States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is long forgotten.
OK… as patriotic rebuke, Young's remarks were
about as relevant as Reid's. But as a declaration of Al Qaeda's futility it
was a home run. Pirates were the terrorists of the 18th century, and these
days pirates are exactly as scary as their ride at Disneyworld. America, the
good bits as well as the bad, will outlast the wrongdoers. I am a loyal customer
of Pizza Pirates the same way that people who live in 23rd century Pomona
will probably be loyal customers of Taco Terrorist.
Reed is, paradoxically, an American kind of jerk loser. His is the face of
the Kinkos employee who mangles your originals, the postal worker who denies
the existence of media rate, the Pomona City Clerk office lady who blankly
told me, last fall, that the Xeroxed forms I needed would be "fitty eight
cents" (Why, I asked breathlessly - after exiting the courthouse, crossing
a block of lawn designed solely for my humiliation, retrieving exactly fitty
eight cents from the car's ash tray, walking back to City Hall, removing my
belt and submitting to another security xray , returning to the clerk's office
and waiting in line again only to be told that the forms were now "eighty
two cent" - couldn't an extra dollar have been tacked onto the final
$196 charge that the filed paperwork would cost? There followed a look of
dismay as if I'd attempted to set my own shoes afire). Nazi skinheads admire
Al-Qaeda because they delivered the goods. But I suspect there may also be
a deeper level of the skinhead psych makeup that equally identifies with the
hapless loser who couldn't light his shoes afire because his feet were too
sweaty.
Young's dismissal was also a nice parallel of the
chewout delivered to press secretary Ari Fleischer a month earlier by revered
AP reporter Helen Thomas:
THOMAS: My follow-up is, why does he [the president] want to drop bombs on
innocent Iraqis?
FLEISCHER: Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies
and friends --
THOMAS: They're not attacking you.
MR. FLEISCHER: -- from a country --
THOMAS: Have they laid the glove on you or on the United States, the Iraqis,
in 11 years?
If Reid is the pathetic employee, Fleischer is the
petty middle manager with a great big ass. His is the face of the friend's
uptight dad, the Kinko's manager who asks to count all the copies in your
bag, the bank branch head who refuses to accept his own clerical mistake.
They are two subsets of the same jerk attack
Last year I managed to visit DisneyWorld's Hall of
Presidents in Orlando, FL. After some strange narration and the introduction
of all preceding presidents, the GW Bush robot bungled a contentless speech
that was a most unwelcome infusion of reality into the theme park experience.
In the background, the Kennedy and Lincoln robots could be seen shaking their
heads in disbelief. If Fleischer is the petty middle manager, Bush is the
drunken asshole whose family connections managed to get him installed as the
most powerful man on Earth. Whatever scoldings this one-man brand of jerk
receives are hush-hush, delivered only in the wee hours by the ghosts of his
predecessors or the terrified face that greets him every morning in the Presidential
mirror.
NOTES ON THE FEBRUARY 15 ANTI WAR MARCH IN HOLLYWOOD
2/17/03
One exits the Hollywood & Vine Red Line stop,
with its walls of metal movie reels and aluminum palm trees, and emerges into
the light at the actual corners of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine street. There
are a lot of people here! There is a man dressed as a mummy! The weather is
nice! All the police officers are good looking!
One is thankful to live in a place where the protest
starts not with a somber, snow-draped view of the Capital Building, but a
sunny, shorts & t-shirt view of the Capitol Building (as in Capitol Records).
The march heads west. Occasional disdainful rocker dudes can be seen from
various doorways. The march continues down Hollywood for almost a dozen blocks,
passing a barrage of landmarks - Musso & Franks, the Egyptian, the Scientology
center, The El Capitan, the Kodak & Grauman's Chinese theaters. Several
different spellings of the word "worgy" can be seen in the signs
above the throng. Happy guys sell overpriced souvenirs and star maps from
the sidelines. America is great! Fuck you, Al-Qaeda!
For some reason, the event seems far more pleasant than January's antiwar
march in downtown Los Angeles. Perhaps the initial pressure for drama has
been removed. This is not the largest march by a longshot (Rob Reiner is the
speaker and he hasn't had a hit in years). DC's march is many times larger.
European capitals are mobbed. Also, the difference of just a few weeks has
seemed to infuse far more regular people into the proceedings. The craggy
lifers are still here - handing out their flyers attacking shadowy "U.S.
bosses" and other antiwar groups and even the events' own speakers -
but their soul-draining humorlessness is not the tone of the day. They've
been outnumbered by the normal folk.
The march turns south on Hawthorn, which has only
two lanes and no landmarks. One overhears the phrase "cockamamie side
street" muttered. A man clearly old enough to know better (he has a beard)
starts chanting slogans that make the surrounding crowd laugh uncomfortably.
"Defend worker's Iraq", the man cries. "Defend North Korea
from capitalism!" One shares a look of mock horror with their pal Anthony
as a middle aged white woman stops rapping through a bullhorn long enough
to declare over three hundred million people are marching on Rome!!
Although these scenes seem familiar, there are noticeable
differences between 2003 and that last Chinese zodiacal Year Of The Sheep,
1991. There are definitely more signs using bad words now. And more people
have Photoshop and fancy laser printers these days (resolving that nagging
question of what NSA head Condoleeza Rice would look like in an SS cap). But
there are also no counter-protestors to be seen, a strange omission. The big
goony guys in flag hats are elsewhere, at home maybe, watching football. Does
the silent majority really care about Iraq? Only the planners of this future
war seem to have any real enthusiasm for their position.
The march is squeezed off Hawthorne onto the even
skinnier Orange drive. Blocks away, one can still hear the white woman rapping.
Finally, the rally is dispersed onto Sunset Boulevard, where somber protesters
in front of an IHOP hold aloft a banner reading SADDAM = PANCAKES and many
signs advertise the new DMX "Cradle 2 The Grave" soundtrack, which
will be in stores February 18th.
WHIP @ SMELL
3/3/03
The Whip - a new band from Olympia, WA featuring Joe
Preston from Thrones and Jared Warren and Scott Maniac from Karp - played
at The Smell this last Friday and boy did those mothers rip. Good God. Great
music was played and snappy banter was had, Joe looked genuinely happy and
the new umpteen-bajillion watt sound system asserted itself in the face of
L.A. Weekly badmouthing.
Also, no one died. That ripped as well. If there is
any silver lining to last month's horrific nightclub tragedies in Chicago
and Rhode Island, it is that concert goers now have something more concrete
to worry about than Level Orange soft-target terrorist attacks. In L.A., one
can also stop fretting about earthquakes. And club owners have something new
to raise their blood pressure. In cities around America this last week, nightclubs
have been feeling the stresses of a post-Great White world, one where it is
even less funny to yell fire in between a band's songs. In New York, ABC No
Rio's shuttering (although amusing to the club's many enemies) signaled some
new course by city officials already taking a hard line towards public dissent,
culture and merrymaking. But clubs everywhere are undertaking squashings of
a new and sinister tone.
Neil Burke and I visited The Station in Warwick three
years ago. He needed to buy some Blue Oyster Cult tickets. It was that weird
time of the day when nightclubs are open for business but still hours away
from any live music, and the only other people present were barbacks and soundmen.
Not being a fan of B.O.C., I spent a few minutes inspecting the photos of
failed hair bands in their front hallway. It was in this hallway that 25 of
the 97 people who burned to death were found last week, stacked and unidentifiable.
I tried to eyeball the rooms of The Smell on Friday, comparing each to my
memory of that hallway, and all I could calculate is that a lot of those hallways
could fit in the Smell. The Smell is a big place. Even on the crowded nights,
its vastness offers some reassurance of background safety from the elements.
After the Whip played people applauded a lot and dispersed
and a suspicious little man arrived. A few minutes later, the staff abruptly
and quietly made the rounds from group to group, informing everyone that the
building had to be immediately vacated. A full team of fire inspectors materialized,
maybe a half dozen guys of the No Bullshit variety (although one was seen
laughing at the unflattering wall of GW Bush photos). Wiring was scrutinized
and dimensions were taken. The new stage - painstakingly measured at exactly
44" from the wall, in complete compliance with fire codes - was arbitrarily
deemed incorrect. A series of additional arbitrary violations followed and
now the Smell is closed indefinitely. My sources tell me indefinitely means
"at least the next couple of weeks", and "hopefully no longer
than a month". But it still sucks.