#But seriously the way an artist's obsession with perfection is combined with body issues

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

I am still thinking about tmagp 2, did you know that ep was written specifically for me?

[mickey-milkovichs]

baby you light me on fire, ch. 1 - faith/buffy

also on ao3

On Buffy’s first day at Sunnydale’s School for Special Students Who Might Be A Danger To Themselves or Others, she met a girl unlike any she’d known before.

The girl—named Faith—had wavy brown hair, a curvy body, dimpled face and juicy, bite-able lips that housed a wry, electric, mocking but somehow sweetly genuine grin that caused Buffy to spark like a live wire. The first time Buffy saw her, the girl was sitting on the front steps of one of the dorms, tanning her bare legs, midriff and shoulders. She wore tiny jean shorts, a rolled up, ripped white tank top—braless, Buffy couldn’t help but notice—and 80’s style black Ray-Ban sunglasses. The hot, late August sun beat down on the top of Buffy’s head, making her almost think she could feel individual strands of peroxided blonde hair frying and breaking at the roots. The heat waves floating up from the pavement created a weird bubble that made Buffy feel like this girl and herself were the only two people in the world. She watched a single drop of sweat drip all the way from the brunette’s sinewy neck down into her deep cleavage. She felt lightheaded, whether from the heat or the intense energy this girl radiated, or from some combination of both, she didn’t know.

The girl shifted one of her legs up and wrapped her arms around it, breaking Buffy out of her daze. She reached into her back pocket, pulling a long Twizzler out of it and sucking it into her mouth. Buffy watched it, the red of the candy almost the same as the red of the girl’s lips, for several moments, then shook herself and started walking up the steps, dragging her heavy suitcase behind her. She forced her eyes straight ahead, but out of the corner of her eye she could see the girl shaking a bottle and catching some of the liquid in her hand, and then spreading it smoothly over her neck. Buffy might have flicked her eyes toward the girl for a second too long because--

“Hey, babe,” the girl said in a deep chocolate voice full of amusement, tone dripping with sweet honey. Chocolate and honey. One of a dozen perfect ways to describe Faith, Buffy would come to find out. “See something you like?” She held out a hand for Buffy to shake, still slightly covered in white sunscreen.

“I—I, um--” Buffy stumbled through a response, embarrassed and confused at being caught. Maybe she had heatstroke.

“It’s cool,” the girl said, lowering her hand. “See you around.” It was then that she first unleashed the grin that made Buffy weak. Buffy felt as if a bolt of lightning had hit her. Her vision was wavy, like an old TV switching channels.

Buffy continued to stumble up the dorm steps, walking backward, eyes locked on Faith like one of those stupid moths that are so obsessed with light they fly right into light bulbs and die.

The girl kept her head forward, feigning nonchalance, ignoring the girl staring at her as she chewed on another piece of candy until Buffy was on the last step, her hand grasping the cool door handle. Then she turned around and raised her sunglasses quickly. Buffy was caught at the sight of her large amber-brown eyes, surrounded by thick black lashes, the bright sunlight almost making them shine. The girl winked at her, slowly and deliberately, then her eyes canvassed Buffy’s body, causing heat patches to erupt under Buffy’s pink mini skirt and on her tanned bare legs. Buffy wasn’t sure if she imagined Faith’s eyes starting to glow a bright yellow before she quickly snapped her shades back on and turned away. Buffy turned around and walked into the building on legs that wobbled, letting the air conditioned building cool her heated body.

*

“B, think fast!” Buffy sat up quickly from the tree trunk she had been resting against and looked around wildly, hoping to catch whatever was about to come flying at her before it could hit her in the face. Faith loved to test her reflexes, constantly tripping Buffy as she walked through the halls or throwing things at her, both in class and out. Buffy let it slide. She was getting practice controlling her skills, and Faith had her fun. And truthfully Buffy could never deny Faith anything she wanted. Plus, she maybe liked how Faith would laugh her full, deep, throaty laugh and say “damn, girl,” every time Buffy passed one of her dumb physical tests. Faith’s grin still lit Buffy up and caused her stomach to flood with butterflies.

Faith fell down beside Buffy on the grassy courtyard and took a bite of the apple that Buffy had caught, right out of her hand.

“Faith,” Buffy scolded as Faith’s hot breath on her hand made her dizzy, “why are you throwing your food at me? And at least let me give it back before you start eating.”

“Nah, B, I want you to feed me,” Faith said with a gooey, chewed apple filled grin.

“You’re a pig.”

“Mmm, that’s why you love me.”

Buffy rolled her eyes and suppressed a smile at Faith’s antics as their friends joined them for lunch. Over the year Buffy had formed a small group of casual friends with girls like herself, girls who had “special abilities”, AKA problems. There was Anne, a sweet, flighty blonde who had been alone her entire life, drifting from place to place and person to person, but still managed to retain an intense amount of kindness. In fact, empathy—the ability to feel and experience other’s emotions—was her power, and her problem. Like almost everyone else’s “problems” at Sunnydale, it was a supernatural ability stemming from a deeper, emotional issue, and it was dangerous to her. Sometimes the feelings she contracted could send her into the lowest depression or the highest high. She was learning how to not let other people influence her sense of self.

Intense, traumatized Bethany had been abused her entire childhood, and if almost anyone touched her by accident, she would telekinetically send heavy objects flying across the room. So far no one had been seriously injured, and therapy was helping her get it under control. Deep, artistic Cassie was psychic. The inability to help people when she knew they needed it was driving her crazy, and she wanted to get rid of her powers all together. Dark-haired Dana, Cassie’s best friend, was quiet most of the time, and a total mystery to Buffy.

Buffy herself was in to learn how to control her superhuman physical strength and speed after assaulting her mom’s abusive boyfriend.

And of course there was Faith. Buffy’s best friend, the one girl here that Buffy felt a real, true connection to, even if it sometimes felt like Faith was made of smoke and could just disappear into thin air, even if sometimes she would get quiet or moody, and sometimes couldn’t be found for days at a time. Buffy still didn’t know why Faith was at Sunnydale, and even though she would joke lightheartedly and deflect the question when people would ask, there was an intense edge to her that made sure no one would dig too deep. Buffy could only guess that it had something to do with the dark sunglasses that Faith wore twenty-four seven, or the fact that she attended anger and emotion management with Bethany.

[oneweekoneband]

Why Did It Take Me So Long To Notice That The Word Is “Fury” Not “Furry”?

Hello again. While I must admit to mild surprise at Dinosaur Jr.’s absence from the constantly growing roster of artists covered on OWOB, I should also state my attempted approach to writing about a band with no lack of wordage already available on its behalf. Though potentially futile, I will be trying to write something that benefits a cross-section of readers, from the unfamiliar but curious to the currently dismissive therefore purposely detached to the self-appointed superfan. All of this being stated, please understand that “attempted” carries one hell of an implied emphasis.

As covered in the previous post, I’m an active writer with many years in the trenches, though at least a half-decade in between my first toe-dips into this endeavor and the formative teenage moment when exposure to two Dinosaur Jr. albums (1987’s You’re Living All Over Me and 1991’s Green Mind, their second and fourth, respectively) combined to transform a fervent interest in underground music into a terminal, all-consuming obsession that almost seems to have dictated, in some way, shape or form, each lifting of a finger since. 

I’ve had a fair amount of writing published on the subject of this band, but most of it appeared during the first half of my now 18 years in this racket, barring the entries about several Dinosaur Jr. albums did make it into my second (and most recent) book, which carried the subtitle of 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981 - 1996 and a title that I absolutely hate so it shall not be revisited. On that note, attacks of full-body cringe have become as reliable as Christmas upon revisiting older writings, therefore I did not in order to guarantee no points or angles reiterated. But for what it’s worth, at some point in the early-00s, I did a long and embarrassing tribute to You’re Living All Over Me for the Perfect Sound Forever website as my first piece of writing on the band. Then once the spotlight was aimed backwards and topically in 2004-2006 for that period’s two-tiered reissue and reunion activity, I wrote a bunch of features about the Homestead and SST years (plus the early run of reunion shows) for several outlets. I interviewed both Mascis and Barlow, twice each if I remember correctly, and essentially felt like I said everything there was to possibly say about this band whose music more or less put me on a personal and professional course that continues to this day. I don’t feel like that anymore.

Two things to take into account before we move on: First, none of the subsequent entries will be this long, or at least that’s the plan. Secondly, this week will feature very little writing on the four albums of new material Dinosaur Jr. has released since the original lineup of J. Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Emmett Jefferson Murphy III (almost exclusively known as “Murph” but I find his full given name to be amusing) reunited in 2005…will be of the unflattering comparative variety. However popular it might be to jump to black-and-white, definitive conclusions, do not take this to mean I consider these albums to be bad or boring or anything of the sort. But do know that they are, despite what the rest of the world seemingly believes, inferior when placed against what I will be trying to push into your ears and lives going forward. And understand that Dinosaur Jr.’s major-label era (1991 - 1997) will be explored in a nooks-and-crannies fashion (meaning, we’re going to get into Mike Johnson’s discography), as I feel there’s a nice chunk of amazing music hidden in there that has been largely overlooked or misunderstood.

I am about as obsessed with music as I am the non-fiction ghetto in which I operate.  Therefore it might or might not behoove me to do something no one outside of this little world should waste their time with, and that would be lot of overthinking about a couple of crucial elements of artistic criticism and appreciation that appear to be under constant attack these days: context and nuance. There is no such thing as good-to-great creative nonfiction or journalism that lacks or misuses either, and the most difficult to translate of the two is, of course, context. 

These days it seems every talking head (or every record-store loiterer or live show barnacle) of similar vintage to myself should be wearing a t-shirt or rocking a bumper-sticker that says, “Ask Me What It Was Like Before The Internet!”. This is something for which I harbor a visceral and distinct distaste if not great embarrassment. Any historically-precise party line of assumed profundity is going to fail at transmitting the intended impact for two reasons. First is the obvious neutering of any meaning or relevance when beating a cultural audience over the head with something, year after year, generation after generation. The second is more problematic, as I’m not certain that being present during its heyday or for a following period of linear influence is necessitated so as to provide fundamental context needed to understand how or why a band was groundbreaking or brain-rearranging or whatnot. 

For example, Dinosaur Jr. was four albums and seven years active once its music entered my life in earnest. Still, when it comes to blanket mantras of the reality-removed like, “This Was Before The Internet!” or “We Didn’t Have Cell Phones” battle stories, usually issued as some delusional badge of struggle or evidence of authenticity, we’re talking something that means far less than is assumed to a recipient without the same experiential history. I usually cringe when I witness someone else trying to get this across to a younger generation, though I have yet to figure out myself how to do it effectively. 

Conversely, there are examples of past underground rock prescience (well beyond the legendary trio of albums released by Dinosaur Jr. between 1985 and 1988) such as Mission of Burma, Black Flag, NEU!, Brian Eno’s “Third Uncle”, The Feelies, The Embarrassment, Can, This Heat, The Fall, mid-period Sonic Youth, Husker Du’s SST years, Black Sabbath, Slayer, mid-80s Swans, and Miles Davis’ 1970 - 1975 output, to name but a few, that occurred long before I developed anything close to refined taste or the ability to let music have an impact on a deep emotional and intellectual level. Or, for that matter, the ability to breath air outside of the womb in some of those cases. 

Still, once properly blown away, I could easily wrap my head around how each example was way ahead of the curve, or scared the shit out of most listeners who came in contact with it in real time. Of course, it helps if the music in question resides in the exclusive canon reserved for that which is genuinely timeless. If it falls short of timeless it sure as hell better be a high quality, well-aged specimen of music that’s nonetheless easily identifiable as being from a certain era of yore. Much of material released by Dinosaur Jr.’s during the band’s first two phases of activity, which together span 1985 until 1997, fits into one of those two categories.

My first meaningful introduction to Dinosaur Jr. essentially played out in similar a similar fashion to formative life-altering moments spun by many writers, musicians, and fans of my generation or older. I suppose a warning should now be issued that you’re about to read yet another account of someone taping episodes of MTV’s 120 Minutes. I had a habit of setting the recording time to the shittiest quality of six hours and fitting three episodes of said show onto my parents’ VHS copies of HBO and Cinemax films like The Cotton Club and Bill Cosby’s Himself. Some time after its parent album (You’re Living All Over Me) was released, on a Christmas night when I was in my early teens, the video for “Little Fury Things” ran between a Michelle Shocked number and The Cure’s infuriatingly awful “Let’s Go To Bed” (that goes for the video and the song). At first I focused on other future life-alterers like the clip for The Fall’s “New Big Prinz” and Sonic Youth’s iconic “Teenage Riot” video, as Dinosaur Jr.’s idea of a video and that song were just too fucking dark and ominous for my young teenage mind. 

But because I had to fast forward or rewind through multiple Christmas-special live-in-the-studio tomfoolery from hosts They Might Be Giants along with crap that was somehow already “not for me” like Fishbone, Camouflage, Translator, and the not-that-bad-but-long-as-hell video for Love And Rockets’ “Dog End Of A Day Gone By”, I eventually came around to the three minutes and change that was the “Little Fury Things” video….like a moth to flame. I still have the very VHS tape I used to play and rewind repeatedly while my parents were at work during the day, blasting it through the shitty speakers of our 27” Sony Trinitron and running all over the floorplans of the three houses (well, one house and two apartments, if we’re to split hairs) I lived in during my high school years. The beginning of the video goes blank for a few seconds because I accidentally hit “record” on the remote amidst some furious bouncing all over the couches and chairs.

I seriously doubt there’s a song I’ve listened to, on my own accord, more times than this one and it still delivers a palpable, albeit much different due to time passed, charge as it plays at this very moment. The sonic dichotomy that makes this track exciting- powerful noise/distortion married to a huge, highly emotive pop hook-happens to be another dragon I chase to this day and in general has been one of the crucial elements of forward movement undertaken by post-hardcore, proto and first-gen indie-rock, punk rock, shoegaze and underground metal over the last 30 years. Because I still run into music obsessives, mostly younger, who are unaware of Dinosaur Jr.’s legacy and historical place as a paramount force of innovation, influence and well-aged listening excitement, I’ll close this entry with the aforementioned video despite it visually communicating far less than it does musically. 

Much has been written (years ago by myself and more recently in Nick Atfield’s 33 ⅓ book on the album it opens) about attempting to decipher or assign one’s own meaning and words to what is probably a bunch of lyrical nonsense. I think that’s organically symptomatic of anything that hits with this kind of power and non-cheesy melancholic punch. A personal fave, however, would have to go to the one-off “Hallelujah, the sunlight brings the red out in your eyes” line that opens the gate for an instrumental mid-section of riffs (where a guitar solo might normally be).

“Little Fury Things” official video from 1987′s You’re Living All Over Me

And here’s a couple of clips that hopefully illustrate how insanely loud and air-moving Dinosaur Jr. Mach I must have been as a live band, especially considering the average age of the members was 20 to 22.

1986 at UMass…

Germany, 1988, full set. Pretty good sound given the age/era.

[allen-d-rivers]

Murderers Anonymous

You don’t want to read about me.

Seriously, I’m not worth your time.

You’re still reading? Are you one of those types who has to leave a handprint on the wall because you don’t trust the wet paint sign? Or is it just a rebellious streak? Have you been diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder?

Approximately 26% of Americans over the age of eighteen suffer from at least one diagnosable cognitive disorder. Spend some time researching your personality quirks on the internet and you’ll come up with a myriad of disastrous issues. Are you obsessive compulsive? Bulimic? Maybe you have ADHD? Social anxiety issues? Ergophobia? List some things about yourself – don’t worry you won’t be alone! We can give you a nice little label, some pills, and most importantly an excuse for all of your shortcomings.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not discounting disorders entirely. We are all legitimately fucked up. Maybe I’m just saying the titles, categories, and treatments are misnomers. Maybe I’m saying narrowing the scope of what’s wrong down to one “condition” only serves to give us the illusion of control.

Or maybe I’m not.

Are you seriously still reading?

I knew a guy once; let’s call him Billy, who went off to Iraq fresh out of high school. Billy was pretty fucked up before he went to Iraq, a borderline alcoholic with penchant for fighting anyone who looked at him the wrong way. Billy had issues, but these combined with his miserably low high school GPA made him a perfect candidate to become one of Uncle Sam’s boys.

Three weeks into deployment an RPG struck Billy’s Humvee. He probably would have become meat pudding if it hadn’t been for his best friend in the unit, a poor son of a bitch named Joe Murphy, who happened to be standing between Billy and the Humvee when the grenade struck.

“So she lifts up the burka and she’s packing a dong!” Kind of sad, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you wish your last words were more flattering, and not the punch line to a joke about a goat-herder’s unfortunate run in with a transsexual Sunni?

I don’t know; who am I to judge?

What was left of Joe coated Billy. I’m talking searing hot flesh melting into his skin, gore forcing its way into his mouth, and eviscerated organs clinging to his body like parts of some grotesque ensemble.

I remember the party his family threw for him when he returned. I attended not because I was particularly fond of Billy; I just wanted to feel a sense of belonging. You know, the type of feeling that you get when tell someone you donated to charity, or ran a 5k to support cancer research.

You just do it so everyone thinks you’re a good person.

Everyone includes you.

Halfway through the evening, someone popped a balloon and Billy shit himself, put his hands over his ears, screamed at the top of his lungs, and ran until he tripped and fell face first into his welcome back cake, destroying it as he fell to the floor, face coated in vanilla frosting and pants soaked through with feces.

Approximately 7.7 million Americans over the age of eighteen suffer from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, typically resulting from an injury or severe psychological shock. Symptoms include loss of sleep, constant vivid recall of the traumatic experience, inappropriate emotional outbursts, psychological regression, and a dulled response to the outside world.

The last I heard, Billy was addicted to pain killers, had a constant twitch, was unemployed and blowing dudes for pills in an alley in Tacoma, Washington.Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not.

Does it matter? He’s fucked up, you’re fucked up, I’m fucked up.

And you’re still reading.

I knew a kid once, an imaginative, bright little boy who had the misfortune of being born into a low income family. Maybe his creativity came from his mother, a failed artist turned pot dealer who was more concerned with completing high school level pieces of art than she ever was with taking care of a son. Or maybe it was from his father, who so inventively named the belt he beat his son with “Mr. Slack” for reasons unknown.

“You’ve been a bad, bad boy!” Mr. Slack would say in a voice eerily similar to that of Mickey Mouse. “Mr. Slack is comin’ for ya!”

But honestly, the boy probably got his creative and unique perspective from watching his parents fuck. His first memories of this were from when he was four or five, but he thought that the experiences went further back than that. His parents had the odd habit of stripping down and boning right in front of him, literally dropping whatever they were doing to go at it.

“Oh let him watch! He’ll learn early!” his obese father cackled as he thrust his stubby cock into the eagerly awaiting mouth of his wife. The boy was startled by how his mother stared directly into his eyes the entire time, as if she was taunting him.

Or enticing him.

Maybe his parents caused his social anxiety and sexual dysfunction issues, but these were exacerbated by wasting four years of his life dating a stuck-up, cold-blooded cunt who left him during his most trying time.  

I fucking hate you, Kelly.

I love you, Kelly.

You don’t want to read about that boy. It will only make you a worse person. The baggage he’s carrying, well it’s just too much. Why don’t you go buy one of those commercial novels? You know, one of those feel good stories with the predictable arc where, despite the central conflict and the tension that arises with the love interest, the main character learns a valuable lesson, all misunderstandings are cleared up, the conflict is resolved, and everyone lives happily ever after.

This is your final warning.

No?

Maybe you’re just as fucked up as I am.