Against Me! live

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Last night, I saw Against Me! live in Allentown at the Crockadile Rock Cafe. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen the band over the years, but it has to be at least a half  dozen times or so. Last night’s show was one of the best experiences I’ve had seeing them in the last five years or so, simply because their set list was reflective of their career as a whole and certainly did not ignore the songs from their first few albums that still remain some of my favorite punk rock albums of all time.

The beginning of the set, for instance, featured some old fan favorites. The band blasted off the set with “Cliche Guevara” from 2003’s The Eternal Cowboy. In fact, the first quarter of the set featured several of their faster, more anthemic songs, including “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong”and “From Her Lips to God’s Ears.” These early songs caused the floor to erupt into one big mosh/circle pit, with the young fans budging forward, banging against each other, and throwing their first in the air to sing along to old favorites. They continued to do that for just about the whole set.

The set was laced with tracks from the band’s major label albums, New Wave and White Crosses, but for the most part, the band stuck to the faster songs on those albums, except for the track “The Ocean.” I noticed a few things about the tracks from the band’s major label era. First, most of the songs drew a solid response from most of the audience, so maybe Against Me!’s fans are now more accepting of those albums. Second, those songs sound SO much better in a live setting, with Butch Vig’s slick production removed. Front man Tom Gabel’s voice is a lot louder and more guttural when he performs those songs live, and the rest of the band speeds the tempo up.

Overall,though, the set was pretty heavy with old songs. The band played nearly all of The Eternal Cowboy last night, as well as several tracks from 2001’s Reinventing Axl Rose, including the title track, “Walking Is Still Honest,” “Those Anarcho Punks Are Mysterious,” and “We Laugh at Danger and Break All of the Rules,”which concluded the show. Those songs still draw an immediate, passionate response from the audience and still sound as great 10 years after they were recorded.

The band also played  a slew of songs from Searching for a Former Clarity, the last indie album before the major label deal.  I suspect this album was also well-represented because the band just released Total Clarity, the demos and b-sides from that album.

No one knows what musical direction Against Me! will take now, but I am excited the band is no longer on Sire/Warner and they have started their own label for all future releases, and last night’s set list featured the raw power, energy, and big hooks Against Me! is known for. I suspect it was even powerful enough to win back any old fans that may have defected when the band signed to a major.

Upward, Onward

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My summer vacation technically started a few weeks ago, once I turned in my spring semester grades, but since then, it hasn’t felt like I’ve really had a day off. I’m one of those people who constantly needs to be doing something. Since the spring semester concluded, I have drafted/revised four totally new poems, some of which have found their way into my new manuscript. I’m also teaching a  poetry workshop at the Vintage Theater in downtown Scranton, and I have a wonderful group of students that offer insightful, intelligent comments on poetry we cover.  I’ve also done a few poetry readings, especially at the end of May, and I have more coming up in June. I view these readings as the last push/leg of all of the readings I’ve done over the last 6 months or so for Front Man. When fall begins, I’ll be able to ease up on the readings and do last revisions to my new manuscript.

I’m also spending this summer placing the poems in order for a new chapbook. Some of the poems have already gotten published, including in Indigo Rising Magazine, Word Fountain, Young American Poets, WritingRaw, and soon the Pennsylvania Literary Journal.  I hope to get the new chapbook accepted by a publisher (maybe Big Table Publishing again) at least two years after Front Man came out. That is enough time after the first book came out, but also not too long so people don’t forget about me. Whenever that next chap comes out, I wonder what people will think about it. Gone are the music/punk rock/indie rock references, for the most part, though there is a poem that does reference Bob Dylan. But these are more coming-of-age poems, poems about love, poems about loss, poems about father/son relationships, and all from a male point of view.  Some of the poems are also in tighter forms, unrhymed quartrains especially, while some are longer narrative poems.

 I am indeed getting there, but there is a need to also trim the fat, to cut out a lot of poems that will make the book sound too repetitive.  In an ideal world, I’ll have a solid polished manuscript by the end of the summer, with the poems ordered, but I know how fast the summer turns to fall, and how soon I have to prep my work for the poetry course I’m teaching at Keystone starting in mid-July.

The Revolution Will Not Go Better With Coke

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Spoken word artist/hip-hop pioneer Gil Scott-Heron died over he weekend at the age of 62. If you haven’t ever heard his famous song/poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” you should check it out here.

And here’s an interesting interview with him talking about that song/poem a number of years later and the way social/political change happens and blossoms.

“The first change that takes place is in your mind. You have to change your mind before you change the way you’re living.”

A good piece of advice!

We drank bottled water together and talked business….

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On Saturday, June 4, after I do a reading a 3 pm at RiverReads Books in Binghamton, NY, I’m heading to Allentown with my girlfriend to see Against Me! for probably my 8th or 9th time over the last decade or so. Over the years, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Against Me! The first time I saw them, back in the early 2000s, was, without a doubt, one of the best punk rock shows I’ve ever been to. It was the beginning of the Bush Administration years and my college career, and the songs on Against Me’s  debut full-length , Reinventing Axl Rose, were so poignant for that time period. The tracks sounded even better live in the basement of the First Unitarian Church in Philly. I’ll never forget how when the band blasted into “We Laugh At Danger and Break All the Rules,” they let a slew of fans on stage to sing along with sweat-soaked front man, Tom Gabel. I also heard the Lawrence Arms for the first time that night, a band that would become one of my all time favorites. The Chicago trio opened the show.

Over the next few years, I saw Against Me! a number of times in Philly and New Jersey. Each time, they played a bigger and bigger venue, eventually selling out Philly’s Electric Factory. I enjoyed their string of releases on No Idea Records and Fat Wreck Chords, but I was always torn about their major label debut, New Wave. The production on that album is SO massive and polished, due to the fact the band worked with Butch Vig, the man responsible for Nirvana’s Nevermind album. The band would spend countless interviews defending its decision to sign to a major label, especially after penning songs like “Baby, I’m an Anarchist” and “Reinventing Axl Rose,” a song that praised DIY culture and basement shows. During that time, I was writing music articles for Wonka Vision Magazine, and I got to interview the band in 2007 with another Wonka Vision reporter. Tom Gabel and other band members weren’t exactly eager to defend the deal with Warner/Sire and the drastic change of sound on New Wave.  Of course, this is also a band whose fans scrawled Against DIY on their van and slashed their tires at various shows when the band gained popularity.

Because of that interview, I got to see the band play the Electric Factory with hardcore act Mastadon and indie rock darlings Cursive. To this day,I still don’t think Against Me! fit well on that bill.  But with New Wave, the band was trying to forge a new path musically and commercially, no matter the complaints from DIY/punk purists or the comparisons to Jawbreaker- a band that had a huge underground following, but then alienated that following after releasing Dear You, a major label debut album that marked a distinct change in sound.

I didn’t see Against Me! many times after that show, and it wasn’t until a few months ago I saw them again, also at the Electric Factory, when they toured with the Dropkick Murphys, a band they’re more apt to share a stage with than Mastadon. I was surprised how many tracks from their earlier albums and EPs they played. I did get into the pit and sang along when they plowed through  several old favorites, including “Cliche Guevara,” “Walking Is Still Honest,” “Sink, Florida, Sink!” and “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong.” I forgot how much I missed Tom Gabel’s guttural howls and the band’s smart political/social lyrics. That show even made me go back to listen to the band’s two major label full-lengths-New Wave, and the more recent White Crosses. I will admit each album does have its standouts, if one is willing to accept Against Me! will probably never go back to the basement shows.

I’m eager to see what the band will offer on June 4. Now that they’re no longer on Warner/Sire, their set lists seem to be more reflective of their career as a whole. Whatever they chose to play, I’m sure I’ll be in the pit, hands curled into  fists, singing along to some old and newer favorites. Against Me! penned some of the best protest songs of the Bush years, and without a doubt, Reinventing Axl Rose and Against Me’s sound as a whole makes them one of the most relevant and influential bands in punk rock in the last 10 years.

Celebrating the arts in Honesdale

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This weekend, I had the pleasure of reading at the Honesdale Festival of the Arts with two of my poet friends- Dawn Leas and Alexis Czencz Belluzzi. This event is held every year and features a variety of vender tables, art, crafts, music, and poetry.

Though I only live about 45 minutes or so from Honesdale, I’ve never actually been there. I especially enjoyed the ride up Route 6 and  passing all of the bucolic farm land and mom and pop diners and antique shops. Once we arrived in the actual town, we encountered a slew of other mom and pop stores. The only chain store I saw was CVS.  There’s something special about small towns in America that don’t have a Subway, McDonald’s, or Starbucks on every street corner.

Throughout the day, I manned the table with Dawn, Alexis, and my girlfriend, Jenna. We all agreed that Honesdale has something pretty rad going on in the sense that it has a fairly vibrant art community and a lot of folks quite supportive of starving artists. I base this off of the amount of people that came to our table to talk to us about our poetry chapbooks. Of course, Honesdale is not Manhattan, but what they do have in terms of the arts is supported and preserved by the townspeople. Sometimes I like reading at these smaller locations more than bigger venues in places like Boston and New York because people in towns like Honesdale have a hunger for the arts, to some extent.

Here’s a little picture of our table, though I do feel bad that poor Dawn’s head was cut off!

Dylan at 70

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This Tuesday, one of America’s best-known musical icons, Bob Dylan, turns 70. Rolling Stone currently has a whole issue dedicated to Dylan’s 70 best songs, chosen by editors and musicians, including Bono and Mick Jagger. Bob Dylan remains one of my favorite artists ever, and anyone who knows me well knows I have a slew of his albums, spanning most phases of his career, on vinyl or CD. I am not, however, going to even attempt picking my favorite Dylan songs. Hs discography is far too vast, and there are songs I love from each of his musical/artistic phases, whether it be his early years when he tried so hard to be Woody Guthrie, or his more recent blues rock phase.

I first heard of Dylan when I was a kid. My sister Nicole had a lot of his stuff on CD, and I remember that she used to joke with her friends that the mid-60s era Dylan was “cute,” with his mop of curly hair and black sunglasses. But I didn’t really start listening to Dylan until I was in college and became deeply involved with a slew of left-wing causes. Dylan’s earlier albums, especially The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and The Times They Are A’Changin’, were comforting in the age of the Bush Administration, the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, and the Patriot Act. Dylan’s condemnation of the military industrial complex and the “bomb makers” on “Masters of War” sounded just as poignant in 2002 as it did in the early 1960s.  And his apocalyptic war visions on “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall” found new meaning to me as the bombs started falling in Baghdad in March 2003.

Shortly after acquiring Dylan’s early acoustic albums, I bought all of his early electric albums, including Bringin’ It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisted, albums that earned Dylan the “sell-out” tag from folk purists because by the mid-1960s, when those album were released, he left the politicking and acoustic guitars behind. But I didn’t mind the electric sound, and in fact, I appreciated his willingness to evolve as an artist, to expand his writing to include references that involved everything from T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound to various rock critics at the time that got under his skin.

Over the years, I collected several of Dylan’s albums, even the ones from his Christian phase, and on each album, I’ve always found little gems and have enjoyed Dylan’s wit, trademark snarl, and rambling narratives. Above all, I’ve always been impressed by Dylan to transform, to progress as an artist, to not stay trapped in one phase for too long. Even at 70, Dylan is still selling out shows and drawing controversy, including his most recent trip to China where he didn’t play any of his famous protest songs, drawing ire from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who felt Dylan should have used the massive stage to speak out against China’s human rights issues. But throughout the decades, Dylan always did what he wanted. Why would he stop at 70?

ZineFest Follow-Up

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The other night, I met with Jess Meoni, the organizer of Scranton’s first ever ZineFest, and the writers who will take part in the reading portion of the festival from 4-6 pm on Saturday, June 11 at Pages and Places at Anthology (515 Center Street, Scranton).

The closer this event draws, the more excited I am about it, and I’m confident that the mix of people reading will sustain and maintain the audience’s interest. Everyone’s work is unique and different from each other’s. I wanted to take some time and share some basic info about the different writers.

Alexis Czencz Belluzi has a chapbook of poems out with the Boston-based press/publisher Big Table Publishing (These guys also put out my book, Front Man). Her book, Practicing Distance, was hailed as “teasingly original” and “a finely wrought chapbook of poems” by renowned poet Eric Tretheway, father of award-winning poet Natasha Tretheway.

Dale Wilsey Jr. is a friend and poet I’ve met over the last year. He has no qualms writing honest poems about sex and relationships, but I’ve also heard him read moving poems that explore  father/son relationships. You should check out his blog by clicking here.

Amye Barresse Archer is a friend I’ve made through the Wilkes University Graduate Creative Writing Program, where we both completed an M.A. and M.F.A.  in creative writing. She’s a witty, talented memoirist and poet. The latest collection of poems she’s working on is set to the 80s hair metal scene! How cool is that? She also just started a reading series in the Scranton area called Prose in Pubs. You should check out her blog here.

Rachael Goetzke is another friend I made through the Wilkes Program. She’s currently working on a memoir about the importance of music, especially Pearl Jam, in her life. Like her memoir, her poetry is also filled with references to music and pop culture. She is also a co-founder and editor of the literary journal Word Fountain. The new music-themed issue will be available at ZineFest. Check out her blog here.

I’ll also be reading at the event, and if you reading this blog, then you probably know my work. But if you just stumbled upon this blog, and want a sample of my stuff, check out my site here.

Also, if you are interested in showcasing your zine, poetry chapbook, jewelry, or art, there is still some time to sign up for a table. Just check the ZineFest website for more info. The cut-off date to get a table is Friday, May 27.

And before you come to the reading, make sure to check out all of the vender tables from noon-3 p.m. along Center Street.

Change Is A Sound

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Lately, I’ve been listening to a slew of bands that composed my soundtrack in college, especially Jawbreaker, the Lawrence Arms, Against Me!, and Strike Anywhere.  I’ve especially been listening to Strike Anywhere’s Change Is a Sound album, one of the best punk/hardcore albums of the 2000s, in my opinion. I don’t think I can name another punk album that came out that decade with as much fire, social/political commentary, and grit, besides maybe Reinventing Axl Rose by Against Me! They were probably the band I saw the most in college, other than Against Me! I remember a time when both bands would hit up Philly venues every few months.

Listening to these albums made me ponder all of my old activist friends. For those of you that don’t know, I was involved in a slew of progressive organizations in college and spent as much time going to protests in major East Coast cities as I did going to punk shows in Philly or poetry readings.   I miss my old protest friends, and I hope they’re still raising hell! I don’t really have any activist friends around here. They all still live in the Philly area.

I’m also wondering now if we can FINALLY get out of Afghanistan, considering the fact we killed Bin Laden and a majority of Americans now want to leave the country, as shown through polls taken after Bin Laden’s death. Seriously, can’t we end the era of Bush Administration politics/policies now?  When I listen to Change is a Sound or some of those Bush Administration-era records, I wonder why we’re still engaging in a lot of those policies. Why do we still have 50,000 plus troops in Iraq? Why can’t we withdraw from Afghanistan? Why isn’t Guantanamo Bay closed?

Strike Anywhere is playing with the Bouncing Souls in July, and it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen them. But their lyrics seem to have just as much relevance now, nearly a decade later.

Upon Second Listen

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In the punk rock/indie scene, there are bands that seem like perennial openers, destined to play to cross-armed audience members lingering in the back of a club, waiting for the other acts to come on stage. For a few years, Flordia-based Fake Problems felt like that to me. In the mid-late 2000s, I saw them open for a slew of larger punk/indie acts, including Against Me!, Gaslight Anthem, and others.  Each time I saw them, I never gave them much attention and wasn’t impressed by their folksy sound. I was simply burned out by the folk-punk/indie-folk sound at that point. I also thought the singer sounded like a high-pitched muppet.

Recently, due to a Youtube playlist, I came across some of Fake Problems’ newer songs from their 2010 release Real Ghosts Caught on Tape, released by one of my favorite labels-SideOneDummy Records. Since the last time I saw them, Fake Problems’ sound has expanded and matured. Gone are the high-pitched vocals and complete folksy vibe. The use of electric guitar riffs and big hooks/choruses benefit the band well.  I plan to order the album on wax, just for the tracks “Song for Teenagers” and “ADT” alone. It’s now clear to me this band has grown from an opener to a group that should start headlining and continuing to expand and explore its sound.

Celebrating Kingston’s Own

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There’s another punk rock/post-hardcore  band besides the Menginzers that hails from northeastern, PA and is starting to gain national recognition. I’m talking about Kingston’s very own Title Fight, a group that has toured relentlessly over the last few years and released a few 7-inches and appeared on various compilations. Today, the band released its debut full-length album, Shed, on the nationally renowned punk rock label SideOneDummy Records.  I placed my order already for the vinyl version, and I hope it arrives in my mailbox this week. But I also heard a full-stream of the album here.

I do like the band’s various 7-inches and some of the older tracks, especially “Symmetry,” but Shed is far richer in terms of production, style, and lyrics. Shed is a little different musically than previous releases. Title Fight no longer sounds like a band trying to belnd pop-punk with hardcore elements. Instead, their sound is more focused here, and they somewhat mirror the  likes of Small Brown Bike, early Hot Water Music, and American Steel, some of my all-time favorites. I say that because of the intricate guitar riffs, big hooks, youthful punch, raspy vocals, and chugging power chords that fill this album. In fact, as soon as I finished listening to the stream of Shed, I wanted to listen to Hot Water Music’s No Division or Forever and Counting, or Rogue’s March by American Steel.

One of my favorite tracks is “27”, which focuses on the loss of a loved one and highlights the band’s lyrical growth.Other standouts include “You Can’t Say Kingston Doesn’t Love You” and “Stab.”

This is a stellar full-length overall, and hopefully the band has just as  long of a career and dedicated fan base as some of its key influences.

To order Shed, click here.