#also off topic but related to the end of the posy

[plushie-lovey]

Tried to buy that secondhand build a bear that I talked about before at good will yesterday. He still had his stupid little outfit on. I took his shirt off to see if he'd look better without an outfit. And to compare him to another BAB that was donated who was the same kind (I think they're both grizzly bears) to see who I liked more. I decided I liked the one who had the clothes better. So I took him to checkout. But when I got to the register the cashier said she couldn't sell him because he had no tag. He had one before I took off his shirt. I must have accidentally ripped it off. I was so upset cause he had such a sweet face. So I told the lady I understood, and I'd just grab the other bear to buy instead. But she said no cause they can't make a new tag using that bear's tag. But I was like. No, thats not what Im trying to do. Im gonna buy the other bear instead because they are the same bear, and that one has its tag attatched still. But she wasn't understanding that I wasn't trying to get the first for the other's price. And the assistant manager was there and was backing up the cashier. But I know the asm, because she's my datemate's manager (he works there) and he's told me how she never listens to what someone is saying. And I've also delt with her before when she was cashiering, and I was trying to buy a surprise gift for my datemate (who she invited behind the register to check his bag after he clocked out and purposely let him see what I was buying even tho I told her it was a surprise). She sucks. So anyways, I gave up trying to explain myself and proceeded back towards the toy bins to get the other bear. But midway over, I decided it wasn't worth it and just left instead. And that experience was the calm before a quite literal (and terrifying) storm.

[sagehaleyofficial]

HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED THIS WEEK (11.20-11.26.19):

NEW MUSIC:

·     Blink-182 drummer, Travis Barker, revealed in a new interview that the band have recorded a new Christmas song. Last year, he posted a photo of his drum kit on Instagram with the caption “currently recording Christmas music,” paired with a Christmas tree emoji.

·     After teasing the “most political song Palaye Royale has released to date” early last week, the trio have dropped their new song “Massacre, the New American Dream.” Proceeds made from sales will be donated to March of Our Lives and Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence.

·     Creeper launched a live premiere on YouTube for their new music video of the hot single, “Born Cold.” The band will soon be supporting BABYMETAL on the UK leg of next year’s Metal Galaxy World Tour.

·     The 1975 gave fans little waring with the music video debut of recent hit, “Frail State of Mind.” The track is set to appear on the band’s upcoming album, Notes on a Conditional Form, due out February 21, 2020.

·     A Day to Remember released their latest single, “Resentment,” just two weeks after postponing their seventh studio album, You’re Welcome. The band is currently wrapping up the Degenerates Tour with I Prevail and Beartooth before teaming up with Underoath in Florida.

·     Panic! At The Disco dropped a new music video for their rendition of “Into the Unknown,” taken from Disney‘s Frozen 2 soundtrack. The song was first released with a lyric video on November 4th.

·     A year and a half after his death, XXXtentacion‘s final album Bad Vibes Forever, which features blink-182, Lil Wayne and more, has a release date. The late rapper’s team dropped the title track from the album, along with the news it will be arriving on December 7th.

·     Twenty One Pilots’ new music video for their song “Pet Cheetah” offers fans a closer look at their tour set up with a virtual reality view from the stage. The video shows them performing live offering a really close look at the fire, smoke and lights they intricately use on set.

·     Neck Deep put two of their B-side songs from their 2017 album The Peace and the Panic on streaming services for the first time. They recently took to Instagram to announce that they will be taking the rest of 2019 off, they will be back in 2020 and will be playing at Rock for People.

·     Go Radio shared their first single since 2012 with upbeat new track, “Say It Again.” In July, the band’s fans were sent into a frenzy of hope and pure panic as they released a photo sparking rumors of their return.

TOUR ANNOUNCEMENTS:    

·     We Came as Romans revealed their plans for a 10-year anniversary tour in celebration of their album, To Plant a Seed. The band announced they’ll be hitting the road this spring in honor of the record with support from the Devil Wears Prada, Gideon and Dayseeker.

·     Post Malone revealed a second leg of his Runaway Tour, as well as that he is bringing along support from the first leg, Swae Lee and Tyla Yaweh. Posty will continue the run in support of his best-selling 2019 album Hollywood’s Bleeding.

·     The Wonder Years took to Twitter last Tuesday to announce a very special tour for the winter of 2020. The band will be performing two sets nightly, one acoustic and one electric, and will be supported by Free Throw, Spanish Love Songs and Pool Kids.

·     Coheed and Cambria are taking their progressive-rock, sci-fi hits on the high seas next fall on the S.S Neverender, and announced they are bringing Taking Back Sunday with them. The band partnered with Sixthman and Norwegian Pearl to bring fans an intimate cruise experience.

·     Post Malone and Ozzy Osbourne made their recent live debut of their newest collab “Take What You Want” on the last night of the rapper’s tour. The two also performed the Hollywood’s Bleeding track at the American Music Awards, alongside Travis Scott.

·     New Found Glory canceled the last two dates of their From the Screen to Your Stereo to Your Town Tour with Hawthorne Heights. The band tweeted that the cancellation was due to guitarist Chad Gilbert dealing with a “family emergency.”

·     Green Day celebrated 25 years of Dookie by performing “Basket Case” during the 2019 American Music Awards. “Growing up, there was no band more important to me or my brother,” Billie Eilish said while introducing the band.

·     Shania Twain gave a subtle shout out to Post Malone, Twenty One Pilots and more during her 2019 American Music Awards performance. The iconic country artist did a rendition of “Stressed Out,” “Rockstar” and more during her set.

OTHER NEWS:  

·     Bring Me the Horizon have released a behind-the-scenes look at the making of their latest track, “Ludens.” For the majority of the video, we see Oli Sykes and keyboardist Jordan Fish in a hotel room in Ukraine, while the former states how limited of a time they had to submit the song.

·     The nominees for the 2020 Grammy Awards arrived, with Billie Eilish up for Album of the Year and the 1975 up for Best Rock Song. Bring Me the Horizon are further in the running for Best Rock Album against I Prevail, who are also up for Best Metal Performance for “Bow Down.”

·     Oh, Weatherly vocalist Blake Roses took to the band’s social media accounts to announce their breakup. The band account shared the statement with the caption, “Love you all. Thank you for this journey.”

·     In the wake of the 15-year anniversary of her debut solo album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby., Gwen Stefani addressed accusations of cultural appropriation as it relates to single “Harajuku Girls” and more. Stefani recently sat down with Billboard to address the topic.

·     A new event on Facebook called “Storm My Chemical Romance Reunion, They Can’t Stop All of Us” was created last Thursday, and the event already shows 567 going and 1.2k interested. The page information isn’t joking around, but it also slips in some great MCR puns.

·     Vans added to their Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas inspired shoe line, with a pair appropriately named “Christmas Town.” For its design, they took imagery from the scene where Jack Skellington comes across the Holiday Doors while singing “What’s This?”

·     Kevin Jonas poked fun at his own band, the Jonas Brothers, when he joined in on a trend that’s making its way through Twitter with his own blink-182-inspired meme. The punk band responded to the pop singer with the iconic lyrics from their song “What’s My Age Again?”

·     Paramore opened up about a track off their most recent album, After Laughter, with Billboard. Frontwoman Hayley Williams recently sat down with for the outlet’s essays on “100 Songs That Define the Decade,” this time discussing their hit “Hard Times.”

·     Alternative Press put Panic! at the Disco on the cover of their Poster Issue, the publication’s seasonal 68-page collection. In addition, this year’s Poster Issue sums up the last decade of AP as they ready themselves for their 35th anniversary.

·     On a new episode of Bloody Disgusting‘s “The Boo Crew” podcast, Poppy revealed she is working on an original horror movie with frequent collaborator Titanic Sinclair. The artist also discussed everything from Texas Chainsaw Massacre being her first horror movie experience.

·     While The Umbrella Academy is preparing for its upcoming second season, the cast took a moment to appreciate their smaller toy counterparts. The cast shared a photo of them holding their Funko Pops all together, as well as a video showing their reactions to receiving the toys.

·     At this year’s American Music Awards, Billie Eilish won for the Favorite Artist in the Alternative Rock category and Halsey won for Best Pop/Rock Song for her track “Without Me”. Eilish also performed “All the Good Girls Go to Hell” and Halsey with “Graveyard.”

·     Twenty One Pilots updated their Trench logo on two social media accounts, causing fans to speculate new content and the possible end of an era. The logo has gone through several makeovers since the band’s inception.

___

Check in next Tuesday for more “Posi Talk with Sage Haley,” only at @sagehaleyofficial!

[greekprodigies]

Why Shows Like Insatiable Are So Toxic, Despite Their Intentions

As a teenage girl who has only recently grown out of watching Disney Channel, it was safe to say I was intrigued when Netflix released the teaser trailer for their new 12-episode series Insatiable, starring Debbie Ryan, who played the title character of Disney’s Jessie for four seasons. It was a 30-second clip of Debbie Ryan in a hot pink dress, walking down a junk food aisle at a colorful grocery store, smashing everything on the shelves with a sledgehammer. Ryan’s voiceover says, “I’ve heard stories of girls who grew up happy and well-adjusted. This is not that story.” My first thoughts were, based solely on this teaser, that the main character seemed to be the villain, or at least a girl with a grudge. And, based off of this girl’s seemingly bad relationship with food, I also figured it would portray fat shaming in a way that most popular television shows don’t. I was hoping that Netflix would take their power over the teenage demographic and show a perspective that strayed away from the (respectable and still necessary) insecure overweight character still coming to terms with her own body (i.e. Kate from This Is Us or Rachel from My Mad Fat Diary). A perspective that I, an overweight high school senior who has already been through the ringer of despising my fatness, could relate to.

It’s obvious, in retrospect, that I was thinking way too deeply into a vague half-minute teaser video. I had gotten my hopes up. Those hopes were soon diminished when the official trailer was released

The video starts off with Debbie Ryan in a fat suit (I’ll get to why that is so grossly offensive later), introducing herself as Patty and showing her constant struggle as a victim of bullying and fat shaming at her high school. Her classmates (who seem to all be thin) call her “Fatty Patty”, and go so far as to spray paint it on her locker. Irene Choi, who plays Patty’s cruelest offender, is shown shouting “Porky! Butterball!” through a megaphone in the cafeteria, pointing to the main character. Then, after what seems to be a fight over a chocolate bar with a homeless man, Patty is punched in the face. Her voice-over tells us, “Having my jaw wired shut lost me more than just my summer vacation.”

Enter Patty 2.0. She’s the sparkling image of every chubby girl’s dream weight after she watches a show like this and vows to cut off carbs. No stretch marks, no cellulite, nothing that reflects what somebody’s body actually looks like after losing a large amount of weight in such a short period of time. The trailer escalates to a montage style of clips of Patty slapping, punching, and even pouring liquor onto some of her classmates before lighting a match.

It feels like a fantasy that’s trying to be relatable. That’s telling us that every bullied teenager, who’s frontal lobe isn’t developed enough to have a lot of perspective, craves revenge from their tormentors. And it’s easy for this narrative to be confused as a realistic depiction of the experience of being a teenage bullying victim. It’s even in the news, shown in the series of article published about domestic terrorist Nikolas Cruz revealing him being an orphan and being described as an “outcast” in interviews following the Parkland shooting. Sure, Insatiable’s revenge plot is meant to be satirical the same way Dexter (which Lauren Gussis, the writer and executive producer of this show, also worked on) is, but because it’s set in a high school during modern day, Patty (possibly, based on what’s shown in the trailer) killing her classmates hits a softer spot.

In the Teen Vogue article that was released with the trailer, Gussis explains how she “felt it was important to look at [bullying] head on and talk about it.” But it’s hard to look at bullying head-on when its changed so drastically over a span of 20 years. It’s past mean nicknames and cruel but clever comments said as two characters pass in a hallway. And more recently, it’s past cyberbullying. Or, at least, the way adults view cyberbullying based off of tone-deaf shows like Glee and dramatized TV movies like Cyberbully (which stars not one, but two former Disney Channel actresses). I’ve never met a high school student who got called a slut or gay 200 times in the comment section of a Facebook post. And, if I am completely wrong due to the fact that I’ve grown up during the social media transition from Facebook to Instagram and Snapchat, that form of bullying died when the Facebook phenomenon did. It is a subtler conversation than the beautiful cool kids versus the ugly losers.The solution is simple: If you’re going to make a show based off of your experiences of bullying in the 80’s, 90’s or even early 2000’s, make the show take place during those decades. Colliding old stereotypes to a character who exists in 2018 is unrealistic and humiliating.

Intention wise, Insatiable can be easily compared to another controversial Netflix original series, 13 Reasons Why. In the warning videos that are shown before watching, the stars of the show say, “By shedding a light on these difficult topics, we hope our show can help viewers start a conversation. But if you struggling with these issues yourself, this series may not be right for you, or you may want to watch it with a trusted adult,” And this message perfectly conveys a show that’s purpose seems heartfelt but is ultimately clueless. Here we have a television program that is produced by a bunch of 30 year olds, where people in their 20’s play high school students (yes, everyone who plays a teenager in 13RW are actually in their 20’s), pretending to understand what it’s like to be a teenager as if the dynamic between young people and mental illness hasn’t changed immensely in just the past couple of years. Just in five, the use of memes and irony has shifted from simply making fun of something, to helping us cope with the fact that our world is on fire. Everybody is laughing at the jokes about depression because, since the rise of social media and the quantification of how many people like us, we all feel depressed. Suicide, though tragic, has now been boiled down to kids saying they want to kill themselves when they have too much homework. We have an education system that teaches us about the anatomy of sex but never teaches us what questions need to be asked about consent during our sexual experiences. So making a show to start a conversation about depression, suicide, and sexual assault that warns it’s targeted audience (who are constantly surrounded by these topics) that the show might not be right for them is simply irresponsible.

But, if I can counteract what I just said, 13 Reasons Why horrifically also is the only show I’ve seen that has the most correct articulation of modern bullying. That’s not to say that anything else with the show is correct, because it’s not. Perhaps what is so wrong about 13RW is that, because they focus so much on the bullying aspect of high school, it provides a direct correlation between bullying and suicide. Well, that, and the graphic/triggering suicide and sexual assault scenes that were used for shock value. Nevertheless, Hannah Baker doesn’t go home and find a bunch of Instagram DMs of her classmates called her a whore. Any secrets that Hannah’s offenders had regarding what could have led her to kill herself were events that happened IRL. And they were just that: Secrets. Because the bullies were ashamed of what they had done. Even before Hannah committed suicide, Jessica Davis didn’t just go around telling people she slapped her ex-best friend because she thought she had betrayed her.

With Insatiable, it seems like everybody in this fictional high school (except for Patty’s best friend and maybe even a popular girl with a heart of gold) is insanely okay with harassing a girl just because of her appearance. It’s insulting, both as a fat girl and an observer of modern bullying. There isn’t one school in the country where 99% of its students just allow this sort of cruelty. Because we have perspectives and opinions that (surprise!) aren’t always swayed by whatever Instagram model is trending right now. Just because Emma Chamberlain is successful and skinny, doesn’t mean that we’re brainwashed to only make skinny people successful. I’m not saying that there isn’t an institutional privilege that skinny girls have, and have always had when it comes to social acceptance. Because they do. But there’s a gray area where most people stand when it comes to issues as new and contentious as body positivity, and Insatiable is ignoring it. You don’t have to be a body-posi activist to know that making somebody feel like shit because of their weight is wrong. And I hope this show can have a character that, without having any relation to Patty, recognizes that what these bullies are doing is outrageous.

After we recognize that the intention of these shows is ultimately flawed, we can then try to take a step forward and look at the impact. 13 Reasons Why, after being loudly criticized by suicide prevention experts, broke virtually every rule of portraying suicide. And as a result, a study shows that searches such as “how to commit suicide”, “suicide hotline number” and “teen suicide” were elevated after the show’s release. The time period for the search ended on April 18th of that year after NFL player Aaron Hernandez committed suicide, which could have influenced data. And any searches related to the movie Suicide Squad were discounted. Sure, the show had increased suicide awareness, but it also unintentionally increased suicide rationalization. And I fear that Insatiable may be on the same path. Regardless of the revenge plot or the bullying, there is still a skinny actress in a fat suit portraying a fat character who only eats, sits on the couch, and feels bad about herself. Then, after a summer of not being able to eat, returns to high school skinny and composed.

Firstly, the use of a fat suit is sickly but overall not surprising. In a world where blackface and yellowface in Hollywood has only just become unacceptable, fat suits seem more defendable for skinny people who don’t understand that there are a plethora of plus size actors who could have played Fatty Patty just as well (and most likely better) than Debby Ryan with pillows stuffed up her shirt. Perhaps the show could have avoided being so oblivious to its fat-shaming storyline if they had an actual fat person weighing in on it.

Secondly, there is the characterization of fat people as losers who do nothing but eat and watch TV. If there were a time and place for these characters to exist, it is definitely not now, where the call for diversity in Hollywood is louder than ever. Plus, we’ve already seen these people before. And it’s the same plot every time. They are only created to provide a funny prequel to a supposedly more stable version of the character. “Fat Monica” from Friends and “Fat Schmidt” from New Girl show a universe where plus size people can’t be taken seriously until they shed the pounds. When in reality, fat men and women are perfectly capable of being successful in their professional and romantic lives. Ironically enough, another New Girl character comes to mind when I think of plus size characters being accurately portrayed: Emily. She’s Schmidt’s ex-girlfriend from college, who dated him when he was her “Big Guy”. After Schmidt reminisces about losing his virginity to her, she resurfaces into his life as a confident woman who goes on dates and isn’t ashamed of who she is. There even seems to be a layer to her character showing that there had been a time where she was insecure about herself and her body but has overcome them. This is an example of a healthy goal for young girls and boys who are self-conscious of their body. Not Debby Ryan’s character, who only gains confidence after losing an obscene amount of weight.

It may actually be the casting of Debby Ryan that could cause a rise in body dysmorphia in young people from watching this show. Since her face is plastered on every poster, teaser and trailer for the show, Disney Channel fans, and former fans might watch simply because she’s cast as the lead role. It’s certainly what sparked my interest in the show. And since Disney Channel’s demographic has gotten younger and younger, there’s a generation that will watch this show and not see it as fat shaming, but a way to become the person they’ve always wanted to be. Skinny, beautiful and confident while simultaneously making all of their classmates' jaws drop as they walk down the hallway. But Patty doesn’t lose weight healthily, she literally could not eat solid food. Depending on how the show addresses this, it is a possible glorification of anorexia. Just like 13 Reasons Why glorified and romanticized depression. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and anorexia and depression can not make anybody beautifully broken.

To make things clear, I am not telling you to not watch this show. And based off of the 100,000 signatures (and counting) on a petition for the show’s cancellation, none of us may even get to. But speaking as a person who fits into all of these groups, Insatiable gets everything wrong about being a high schooler, a teenage girl, and a fat person.

[djbimbu-blog]

The Adolescents - The Blue Album

This time let’s take a step away from late 70’s New Jersey and into early 80’s southern California with the 1981 album from The Adolescents, which I still don’t really know the name of. Is it just Adolescents, is it The Blue Album, does it have a title? Who the fuck knows. It’s really good, and that’s all that is important.

Sometimes an album comes into your life at the right time, and completely changes the direction of your musical taste for a few years. This album is one of those for me, and led to me spending a lot of my late teens, into my early 20’s, watching punk bands in Elks lodges, garages, and basements. There’s maybe 7 or 8 albums in my life that have made me think “what the fuck was that?” and really influenced my taste or opinions from that point on, and this makes the cut in that department. I wouldn’t consider myself “punk,” I think anyone my age still claiming allegiance to a sub culture needs to do some deep self reflection, but at this point I’ve been vegetarian/vegan for about half my life, and have definite opinions on consumerism, the environment, and I vote very left. I think apparently somewhere along the line the music must have influenced me, but I also listen to a lot of country, and have some white trash tendencies, so who the fuck knows. It’s the chicken and the egg.

Going into high school I was already becoming a music nerd on a pretty base level, I knew a lot about Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Sabbath, AC/DC Nirvana, Motorhead, etc. I was starting to branch into punk territory by the end of 8th grade, with Rage Against The Machine, the Sex Pistols, Ramones, but nothing really deeper than that. Freshman year of high school one of my friends (who knew about a lot of punk I didn’t, and over the next four years would introduce me to a lot of my defining music from that era) was trying to get me into 80’s hardcore, and trying to get me to start a band with him. He was big into The Adolescents, and showed me their first album one day, I don’t really remember exactly when, but that’s not really important. I recognized that one song from Tony Hawk, thought it was kind of good, and didn’t think much else about it. After a few listens though, it really grew on me. It wasn’t like the punk I’d been into before, it was angrier, faster, had wild guitar solos and great riffs (something the Ramones had been lacking for me, coming from a kid who loved Angus Young). It set me down a path into more 1980’s hardcore, into Black Flag (who I would claim to be my favorite band until into my early 20’s), Circle Jerks, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, into the late 80s, with Youth of Today, Judge, Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front, Gorilla Biscuits, Fugazi, then into more current stuff with Ceremony, Have Heart, Righteous Jams, Rival Mob, Limp Wrist, No Warning, back to the early stuff with the MC5, Stooges, New York Dolls, and branches off all these and so on and so on. I don’t have the biggest record collection, maybe 300 with a big stack of 7” records to go with, but probably a solid 1/3 of it is punk related, not to mention the cds that ended up in my car, or slow as hell circa 2006 downloads. This album was the fuse that set off a lot of my musical journey, to steal a phrase from Rattle and Hum. And yes, you can listen to punk and still like U2.

I remember buying this record at an Adolescents show in 2006. 80’s hardcore revisionism was at it’s peak. American Hardcore had, or was just about to, come out, along with a handful of other documentaries. You could find Minor Threat shirts at hot topic. A lot of bands were on tour. Henry Rollins was on IFC. It was a good time to get into all this stuff. Me and a few of my friends got a ride from one of our parents (very punk) about 2 hours away to the city, and went to my first punk show that had over 30 people. They were fucking great, the openers not so much. The band was lacking in original members, but we didn't care. I guess the record is some 25th anniversary edition, in a swirly silver vinyl. I made the mistake of buying it at the start of the show so I had to shlep it around the whole time. The last track of the album has some sort of a pressing mistake, and sounds kind of muffled and fuzzy, but I still played the crap out of it. I still have the flyer from that show framed, and like the Boss, hangs above my stereo.

Times change, you grow up, friends grow apart, life happens. My friend who showed me this album went from being my band mate and close friend, to an old friend I see around town maybe once a year. We went to different colleges, changed a little, got different friend groups, everyone has this story. I don’t listen to as much punk as I used to, I had the opportunity to see the Adolescents last year, and figured I’d catch them next time, I had to work the next day, it was kind of far away, etc. A few days later one of the last original members, Steve Soto, passed away. In 2014 (I think? Maybe 2015) I got a chance to see Rikk Agnew, and he was really good, but I still regret skipping that show.

The Adolescents were founded in 1980, in Fullerton, California. I know Tony Cadena (singer) was only 16 when this album was recorded, Rikk Agnew would have been early 20’s, not sure about the rest, but they’re still a young band. Some of the songs reflect this, some of it hasn’t aged well (“I cannot live in a world this gay” for example), but the musicianship is still top notch. This isn’t The Germs, these guys are tight, fast, and can play well (maybe a bad example since the Germs guitarist would later replace Agnew). They would soon break up, and get back together for a few years in the late 80’s, but this album is their peak. It’s one of a kind, no other punk album really sounds like it. The guitars have a lot of treble, not Minutemen/JFA treble, but it’s definitely part of the vibe. The vocals have a small amount of reverb on them, which really adds something when Cadena pushes himself a little harder. It’s not a surf punk record, but you can tell there’s some so-cal influence there. It’s hard to describe what is so great about this record. It’s just straight up punk rock, nothing ground breaking. It’s like Johnny Thunders, but a little poppier, tighter, and a little angrier. So what? A lot of punk is like that. They just did it that much better than everyone else was.

There’s like 13 songs on this album, so I’m not going to review all of them, just the highlights.

“Who Is Who” is the second track on the album. The first song “I Hate Children” is okay, but a little immature and simple. The second song cranks up the reverb, and really gets the album going. It’s quick, angry, and has a quick Johnny Thundersy guitar solo.

“Kids Of The Black Hole” is the 5th song on the album, and is an epic (by 80’s punk standards) five and a half minute long ode to a party house. It starts off slow, the tempo ramps right up, and stays there for 5 minutes. There a siren sounding lead guitar line over the verse, it doesn’t ft fit with anything else on the album, but it sounds great. There’s a great bridge section that goes into another fantastic Agnew solo. I don’t know if he invented the octave chord (I don’t know what the technical name for it is, basically you play a power chord and mute the middle string to make an octave), but it’s all over this record, unlike any punk record I can think of before, and it appears on a lot of records after. If you can’t tell, Rikk Agnew is one of my favorite guitar players ever, probably in my top 5, and I think criminally underrated as far as punk guitarists go.

“No Way” is the 6th song. I don’t know why it’s so good, there’s like 20 words to the song, they’re immature as hell, haven’t aged well, but the music is really fucking good. The intro guitar solo sounds like an outtake from “Search and Destroy.” It’s a quick 2 minute song, but packs in the energy and music of a song twice as long. Sometimes you can’t explain why something is good, it just is. How exactly does the sun set? How exactly does the posi-trac rear end on a Plymouth work? It just does.

“Amoeba” is the 7th song. Now, while this is a great album, some of the songs on it are just okay compared the the rest. They’re still as good as any other punk from the era, but it’s this three song, ten minute stretch that sets it apart. I can't think of any other punk record with a three song run this solid. “Amoeba” goes right into full speed, has more great Rikk Agnew solos and riffs, tells the story of a scientists looking at some sort of a strange amoeba. Who the hell knows what it means? Everyone thought they were singing “Tony Haaaawk” in the background. It fast, tight, a little silly, and probably the best song on the album.

“Creatures” the last song, is just a quick angry sub 2 minute rant about not fitting in and jerking off. It’s really catchy, frantic, and one of the simplest songs on the album. It has a solo of just octaves, he’s not even playing single notes for solo’s anymore, just rubbing it in that “yeah I’m coming up with this thing punk bands are going to rip off for 20 years.”

Final thoughts:

Favorite song: “No Way.” I know I said “Amoeba” is the best song on the album, and it is, but “No way” is a sentimental favorite. I’ve spent way too much time playing guitar along to this album, I still run through it occasionally (and yes it is kind sad for someone who is almost 30 to still play guitar along to punk records), and I’ve never been able to get the solo right. It’s just a really fun song.

Least favorite song: “Democracy.” There’s nothing political on this record really, so one political song is kind of out of place. They would go into it more with their next album Brats In Battalions  but it just doesn’t really fit with the other songs about scientists, girls, drinking, or jerking white tears.