col001: MUSIC Writing in 2024??? + Palestine Benefit Tapes: 'Punx For Gaza', 'Yes Liberation' & 'Action Now!'
+++a column for the international DIY underground___
+++MUSIC WRITING IN 2024???___
Selected quotes from the 1984 CRASS pamphlet, ‘You’re Already Dead’
“We’re sold down the line by the music-press, the music business and, worst of all, the bands themselves.” […] “So many people mouthing the words, but how many of them really care? It’s easy to appear radical in the pages of Sounds, but in the book that is our life it’s not so easy. Punk has become derivative, escapist and generally BORING. We don’t want rock stars. We don’t want glossy photos of our favourite hero. WE WANT LIFE AND WON’T SETTLE FOR ANYTHING LESS.”
I haven’t thought much about the health of music writing for a long time. In part because who cares? In part because there’s no use diagnosing the dead. In part because the ‘this is the nail in the coffin of music journalism’ thinkpiece has become an irritating genre of its own making, and feels like an abstraction. These kinds of articles have appeared after the rise of the internet, the fall of the street press, the death of the magazine, the corporate takeover of music website x, y and/or z, and always felt to me like an incremental clutching of the pearls. But I’ll admit to being nostalgic for that time in the early-to-mid-2010s when there was an ecosystem of zines and websites mingling with blogs and printed matter, where the latest issue of Maximum Rocknroll could be reached to at the local record store, its contents whined about on message boards that felt like disgusting sharehouse living rooms. I even feel a conflicted nostalgia for Vice and Pitchfork ‘tastemaking’, of the kind that sublimated cultural writing into the world of hipsterdom in a way so cringeworthy that I too cheered on the death of the profession. But I see now — in a world where there’s very little context provided for a new release of niche appeal, in a time where context is everything — that there were some things worth rescuing from the tide that drowned the music journos, even if it was fun to watch us go down.
There are any number of reasons for music commentary to have waned in significance over the past decade and a half, most of them you’d be thinking of right now (no magazine sales and advertising revenue = no financial ecosystem to ‘support’ writers; social media = encouragement of virality with as few words as possible; clickbait regurgitated press releases, and later, AI generated content; the rise of the influencer). But these are concerns for the high rungs of the music industry, who realised that rather than pander to music journalists, they can put all their publicity efforts into putting their top earners in the tabloids. Why would they care about some music writer with an unreliable opinion, when they can just put the word ‘brat’ on a lime green cover and watch the wheel spin. (And how do pop music fans not consider that shit an insult to their intelligence???)
With a loss of authority to even historically important imprints like Rolling Stone, the upper rungs of the music industry discovered that nothing would be gained from a journalistic relationship unless said journalist was controlled by: offer of exclusive content, invite to party, wined and dined in the major label HQ toilet cubicle. If the journalist truly is independent, they become an intrusive third party with potential to disrupt a record sale from label to customer. As the major labels consolidated around streaming providers, they found that it was much easier to package huge swathes of back catalogue to dump into the digital library (either as is, or in an endless conveyor belt of ‘new and improved’ remasters), than it was to support, develop and produce the new. And for the new? Mass marketing and distribution charts its own course through the algorithm, so much so that even mentioning that feels trite. What and why a band is doing what they’re doing, and how that might affect you is not conducive to the wheels and pulleys of the industry, who now assemble rosters of ‘talent’ who make guest appearances on each others records solely to enhance the click-through, with new AI generated tracks sounding no different to the A&R generated pop song in any case: where nothing really sounds like anything…and that’s very much the point.
The issue is that more and more, we see aspirational underground bands follow many of these same guiding principles. Which is a problem, because there is a dividing line between the underground music I listen to and the pop music that I ignore, a line of which seems to be discussed less and less as ‘poptimism’ becomes hegemonic. It seems petty to discuss, but underground musicians are so often happily co-opted by the interests of capital and career, and time and time again, we see that music focused on people and community fades into the background as the aspirational ~artist~ ascends. In talking to members of the international underground over the years, it’s been apparent that a lot of us are craving more writing from below that tries to turn these issues over. But the thing is that those who would (and often do) do that work are overcome by the silliness of obsessing over the details of an artform during the series of global conflicts that we’ll likely look back on as a prelude episode to World War III; such is the mid-2020s.
So I do feel conflicted about working on a music column in these times, but I’ve long been a believer (from experience) that a truly DIY underground music community with united principles can bring people together and influence their political leanings in a positive way: the discovery of punk and DIY helped unteach me years of liberal centrist indoctrination. It made me a better person. And though I’ve been made fun of for this belief in the past (and probably will in the future), I reckon we all know there’s a difference between those of us who did not have brat summers, and those who were forced to pretend they didn’t after the US Democrats made their policy platform a mix between genocide support and ‘Kamala Harris is brat’.
Like the handful of Q&A’s this newsletter has hosted, this is an attempt to contribute towards some turn over of thought for and by the DIY underground communities that most of the subscribers to this newsletter are a part of. As much as there is a waning of the DIY ethic in the contemporary (I don’t think there has ever been so many corporate sponsorships and company logos in punk history than in recent years,) a lot of good things are happening in this tradition; a tradition that offers a turn away from the slide into passivity that’s asked of us by the broader culture. There is music being made and events running that offer an alternative to the tech takeover of every artform, and I’m hoping to locate some of these people who resist such bullshit via this column.
This first edition covers a trio of recent compilation tapes released by members of the international DIY underground, specifically those raising funds for various Palestinian groups and causes. I do not say this out loud enough, but BARELY HUMAN stands firmly with Palestine and its people, always alongside the oppressed, and never with a genocidal state, nor the empire that encourages that to happen. Though the opinion of a small music history project from Australia won’t do much to put a lid on Israel’s genocidal war machine, I have found over the last year that the punks who have redirected their energies to supporting Palestine are generating the kind of broad spectrum solidarity that I felt had been waning in the community in the last decade or so. And thus: this column outlines a selection of just three fundraising compilations for Gaza by the broader DIY community. For more, Rachel Courtney of Maximumrocknroll has put together a comprehensive list of punk fundraising releases for Palestine here: fill your mp3 library with these artefacts!
+++PUNX FOR GAZA (from Sentiero Futuro Autoproduzioni)___
The sixteenth release from your favourite Milano DIY collective Sentiero Futuro Autoproduzioni is, again, an all-timer. The Punx For Gaza compilation tape features a suite of mostly Milano-based DIY bands with all proceeds headed to the Laylac Center, a Palestinian Youth Action Center based in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the West Bank, Palestine. Punx for Gaza is the second fundraising compilation tape by Sentiero Futuro (their first raised funds for Ambulatorio Medico Popolare, a volunteer-run medical facility providing healthcare to undocumented migrants in Milano). This release brings together the many sides of SFA’s interests: predominantly lo-fi hardcore ragers from hc heroes like GOLPE, LUCTA, NARKAN and KOBRA, and some dips of the toe into tripped out jam territory via TV DUST, post-KOBRA trio FESTA DEL PERDONO, and a new one from PORTA D’ORO (the bedroom project of SFA collective member Giacomo Stefanini, interviewed by this very newsletter here.) There are so many great bands in the web that spins out from the Milanese punk community, and like SFA’s first compilation, Punx for Gaza is a guiding light for contemporary punk practice to my mind; every city must follow this example! The limited cassette run has since sold out, but digital sales will continue to go towards the Laylac Centre: get yours here.
+++YES LIBERATION (from The Dissidents)___
The third in a series of compilation tapes organised by Philadelphia’s THE DISSIDENTS, Yes Liberation follows No Genocide and No Occupation in what is (I believe) a nice play on the No New York / Yes L.A. comp battles of underground lore (though you do not have to pick a side between JAMES CHANCE and BLACK RANDY here). Yes Liberation has a real internationalist flavour, with highlights including a five star stomper from Tunisia’s KHASSARAT, another GOLPE classic from Milano, a forty-five second recorded-in-a-shoebox hit from Barcelona’s PIÑÉN, and (as an unexpected intergenerational surprise), a 2020 recording of ZOUNDS 1982 classic ‘Dancing’. A real expert curation of international underground efforts on this one, due in no small part due to Rachel Courtney of the DISSIDENTS’ moonlighting in the MRR reviews section, which remains a go to resource despite the loss of the print edition (RIP). All proceeds from Yes Liberation go to the Gaza Soup Kitchen, with tapes and digital sales live via THE DISSIDENTS bandcamp.
+++ACTION NOW! (from Paperface Zine)___
Action Now! comes from the people behind the great Paperface Zine, a webzine that focuses on longform coverage of new underground releases, with a gentle leaning towards underground (un)pop and indie rock sensibilities. Incidentally, Sydney Salk of Paperface runs the Compilation Nation substack, with great semi-regular reviews of historical compilation releases; and thus, Paperface was primed for their first release to be a killer comp. I’m a sucker for the kind of jams found on this tape: from the TVP’s vs RAMONES (Unplugged) vs JONATHAN RICHMAN contribution by MICHAEL CIPOLETTI & NOAH NASH, personal faves from Sydney friends ITCHY & THE NITS and DUMBBELLS, and an incredible limping, half-speed version of THE SPATULAS ‘Caveman Star’ that closes out the tape. A real gold medal in curation and sequencing on this tape too, a journey of a compilation that circles all approaches to contemporary underground pop, and makes me feel like I’m not totally misguided in my love of not-so-ugly music in a very ugly year. Tapes are currently being re-stocked, but all funds including digital sales go to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund regardless. Add Action Now! to your purchases along with the above, and you will have one of the most comprehensive, genre agnostic mp3 collections of underground hits in the neighbourhood. You must do this!
+++IN CLOSING___
In the recent PUNKINTERN zine, I wrote a kind of crazed questioning of what the (very few) punks among us who aren’t siding with Palestine over this past year would do when pleading their fucked up case to an imagined punk international. Reading back on that writing (and advising it slightly for the recent BH Zine Collection), I was thinking about its negativity, and its focus on the 5% of shite in the community. This was while, ironically, trying to make a case for a broader solidarity along anarchist/communist lines that I think should underlie truly DIY music practice. In part, I think that’s why I went to start this column: to start giving credit to the positive global efforts, however insignificant something like a DIY compilation tape release might feel in the face of empire-supported genocide. I like these tapes because just seeing a band put their name to a release like these makes me feel closer to them and their efforts. I wonder if that is a common feeling out there at the moment? For me, it’s a relief whenever someone’s on our side. There’s a lot of powerful organisations operating above us, and in my mind, everything we do as ostensibily DIY operators has got to be in opposition to that if we’re worth anything at all.
In solidarity!
-Max (e: max@barelyhuman.info)