Over the weekend I flew to New York with my boyfriend, the lead singer of legendary LA hardcore band Strife, to attend a two-day festival at Webster Hall, which he was invited to be a part of. As the title of this article indicates, today’s tutorial is about how to blend in at said show as a 26-year-old-half-Jewish girl who knows nothing about hardcore music, and whose boyfriend is the well-respected frontman of a band that’s been around in that highly-principled world for more than two decades. To be fair, I know little-to-nothing about hardcore. The first concert I ever went to was Spice Girls, and my adolescent idea of rebellion was more about cocaine and anorexia than wearing black, spiking my hair, and taking public transportation to Agnostic Front shows (see, I’m not completely ignorant). This title is a little bit misleading, because I’m pretty sure I stood out more glaringly than a black male model in a J.Crew catalog. Despite the fact that I was wearing tie-dye while everyone else was dressed in all black or camo, and despite the fact that I was in diapers when most of the festival attendees were being arrested for graffiti, and despite the fact that the average concert-goer was pushing 350 lbs, had a shaved head, and was fully decorated with face tats that may or may not symbolize having killed a man, I think I made it work in my favor, and managed to not get my J.Brand-wearing ass kicked. I’ll be honest, I think I even walked away with a few new friends, or at least three people that are good to know if I ever end up “on the inside.” It’s amazing the things you learn when you put aside your preconceived notions and spark up conversations with people you’d ordinarily cross the street to avoid.

Here are my tips for “blending in,” or rather, standing out in a charming-and-not-obnoxious kind of way, while at a hardcore show put on by old-school New York tough guys who basically pioneered East Coast hardcore. I hope this article doesn’t get me killed. I’m only sort of serious.

1) Tell your nice new friend who is maybe nicknamed something vaguely related to gunplay that you like his face tattoos. Follow up by telling him how much you love tattoos, and that you have a few of your own, including one of a humpback whale, and also one of your dad’s middle name, which is Moses.

2) Ask your nice new friend what his birth name is. (I’ll never tell.)

3) Do not flinch when you accidentally cross paths with a 300 pound man doing bumps of cocaine off of his hand in a stairwell.

4) When a large man wearing a motorcycle vest with the acronym for his crew on it wants to show you cell phone photos of his adorable bunnies that he raises on his property in upstate New York, always oblige him.

5) When a large man wearing a motorcycle vest with the acronym for his crew on it goes too far as he’s scrolling through his iPhone gallery and you accidentally see a picture of him double-fisting automatic weapons at his country home shooting range, smile and pretend you did not see anything.

6) Ask a large man wearing a motorcycle vest with the acronym for his crew on it to pose for a photo with your drunk Australian friend and then post the picture all over Instagram with the hashtag “besties.” #besties.

7) When a bartender mixes up your drink order and gives you an extra vodka that you are far too drunk to drink, kindly offer it to a large man wearing a motorcycle vest with the acronym for his crew on it. Although he vehemently believes that vodka is for bitches and pussies, he will wisely not refuse the free alcohol, and more importantly, he’ll remember your generosity in case you ever need him to beat someone up for you.

8) Introduce yourself to everyone as a “Strife Wife” and then wave across the room at your significant other who is doing pre-show stretching.

9) When your boyfriend (the lead singer) is banging his fists into metal lockers in preparation of taking the stage, try not to embarrass him by saying in your cooiest and naggiest baby voice, “Honey, don’t hurt yourself!”

10) End the night by politely excusing yourself because you have to go meet your private school friends from your suburban middle school for pizza at an overpriced yuppie establishment. Walk away unscathed and with a new (mostly imagined) sense of street cred.

Introducing our newest column, Free Weed’s Free Texts, which was born of a text convo that I had half-asleep with Rikky Gage of White Fang/The Memories/Gnar Tapes/best jean vest game in the biz.

Here’s the first in what will hopefully be a series of many (because I’m lonely and like getting texts):

Related: [CULT TALK] Rikky Gage of White Fang & The Memories

Well today I’m in the mood to groove. And to get weird. And to get nasty. So to fulfill all of my desires I give you Faust’s “The Sad Skinhead” off of the 1973 album IV. Coming from the Krautrock explosion that gave the world Can, Kraftwerk, and Amon Duul II, Faust were possibly the catchiest and weirdest, at least on this record. Groovy.

And now I shall dance naked in my living room.

Love,
Ty

(photo by Sara Nataf)

Being a girl at a Danny Brown concert is rough. The day after his show in New York, all I kept reading about was how the world was clutching its collective pearls over the crowd chanting “Suck his dick” at Kitty Pryde during her set. I was there. Let’s talk through it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I got dumped hours before. (By my not-boyfriend. For trying to get a commitment out of him. After 3 years. 3 fucking years. It’s fine. I just look at my imaginary WWJD bracelet and tell myself I’m into forgiveness). So maybe my perceptions of that night were and continue to be colored by my black, newly-deceased heart.

I wasn’t really that familiar with Kitty’s oeuvre before the show. When I originally bought my ticket and it listed “Kitty” as the opening act (I guess that’s what she goes by now, not Kitty Pryde), I momentarily thought it was Kittie, the all girl heavy metal band from the late ‘90s (you may recall their album “Spit”). I thought this because I’m old, and also because that would have been awesome.

I believe that, like myself, a large portion of the crowd didn’t know her music well, leaving Kitty with the onus of having to prove herself. Unfortunately, the only things she proved were that her flow is obnoxious and that her stage presence is whack at best. Probably the least commanding performer I have ever seen. And the styling, Kitty, the styling. It was bad. I was particularly offended by the jewels half-heartedly glued to her cheeks. She was cruising for a bruising with that My Little Pony shit happening on her face.

Was the “Suck his dick” thing misogynistic? Yes. Was it in poor taste? Yes. Did I want to sit her down and give her a cup of hot cocoa after? Yes. However, I do not think any of it would have happened were it not for the fact that Kitty is just not a good rapper. Period. There would have been some sort of heckling no matter what. And I didn’t appreciate her boyfriend/producer hurling water bottles he rubbed his dick on in my general direction (luckily I have quick ducking reflexes). It’s not my fault I was silently standing directly next to the rabble-rousers, or that your girl sounds like a broke-down Ke$ha.

Finally, girlfriend made her exit, and after a brief interlude, Danny took the stage. The man can turn it out; when he cut the music and went a cappella on “I Will” it brought down the house. Unfortunately, the experience of being in the crowd once he started performing was basically this: a mosh pit where teenage boys (aside from Danny Brown, I was probably the oldest person there. I’m 25) try to simultaneously knock you over, grab your ass, and rub their boners against you. It was a lot of sexual assault in a very short amount of time. But, ever the optimist, I have decided that being forced to punch boys in the head may have been therapeutic for me, considering my current state of mind.

In the end, I left physically exhausted, with jacked up hair, resigned to the fact Danny probably did not give us an encore because we were all acting like dicks.

To sum it up: boys are horrible, but so is Kitty. Danny Brown is still cool, but I never want to be in a room with that many of his fans again.

I swear to you, never once in my life have a felt the bliss of a smooth kneecap. Even after a same-day shave I find myself tugging on my hemline in a not-so-discrete attempt to cover up some atrocious patch of hair that somehow escaped a perilous death by my dirty razor blade. There is regularly a 3/4 inch extra coarse hair that sprouts from the general vicinity of my armpit/side-boob, and I’m also pretty close to being able to trim a bear silhouette into my hedge, much like Edward Scissorhands.

Now, admittedly, it doesn’t help that sometimes I shave in the dark because I like to romance myself by showering with the lights off, and that I often use my boyfriend’s old razors which are not regularly replenished, and that I never ever use shaving cream because soap is just fine. Admittedly, sometimes shaving for me is more like waving a sharp object down near my nether regions and seeing what it catches; kind of like a weed-whacker.

The weird thing is, I have no feminist or moral objection to waxing or whatever the sexually active ladies are doing to beautify their bits these days. Money isn’t an issue, I spend it on overpriced drinks and printed capri pants from J.Crew and other things that I probably misplace within a few days anyways. I have a high tolerance for pain; I like tattoos and spanking and other activities that the less Darwinian might shy away from. So, I really have no excuse for being an unkempt cousin IT of a thing.

I guess, in truth, I’m just lazy. Hair removal is not my priority. So, my lovely ladies who know how to do the lady thing far better than I, I’m asking you now for assistance, what is your simplest hair removal routine so that my boyfriend will stop tugging at my butt hairs and telling me “It’s endearing.”

Here at Cultist, we have two official rules in our very unofficial rule book. 1) Only write flattery about people/music/artists/bands we genuinely love (unless it’s hate mail). 2) Always tell a person/musician/artist/band exactly what fanatical stalkers we are of he or she/what he or she does. This is how we preserve the integrity and utter shamelessness of Cultist, although all of that could very well change once we start making a livable wage with this operation. I kid.

All of this unabashed fanning out leads me to my current old-timey musical crush, King Dude, who is pretty much the quintessence of cool masculinity, so much so that I regressed into a nerdier version of Daria meets Doogie Howser the minute we entered the same room. The macabre King, as I apparently like to call him, possesses an air of eerie intrigue, a withdrawn and pensive quality that is a little bit intimating upon first meeting (but that could just be because he was skulking around a dark wood bar in a dark leather booth in a dark all black outfit, like Johnny Cash during his darkest days, only much more loquacious and forthcoming about his passions and demons, especially after a few whiskeys).

Don’t be fooled by their stoner stage name, King Dude is anything but a greasy-haired grom you’d purchase a dime bag from while lazing around the Venice Beach Boardwalk with a paper-bagged 40 oz. in hand. Quite the contrary, the Seattle-based occultist-meets-americana rocker, known to almost none of you as TJ Cowgill, cites pain and suffering as two of his greatest muses, alongside the warm-embrace of satan and beautiful women (he didn’t actually say this to me, but I’ve taken the liberty of improvising for shock value, based on the awesomely heated and tangental interview we conducted at the Thirsty Crow in Echo Park a couple of weeks ago). After seeing him live at the Echo in Los Angeles  (with a surprise cameo from Chelsea Wolfe), I knew I had to exchange a few words with the baritone brute who’d so brazenly taken a swig on stage straight from the bottle. Swoon.

(photos by Rick Rodney)

Did you consider “Barbara Ann” to be a romantic song when you wrote it?

Ya. To me it’s very romantic. Probably one of the most romantic songs I’ve ever written. It’s about – well the whole record is about – desperation, and what people are willing to do, the lowest that people are willing to go, depending on how you look at it. The murder, the killing even the thing that you love because you love it kind of love. And that’s the kind of love that not everybody feels or really recognizes. I’m obsessed with finding those narratives, and really writing in those characters. When I found that story, in my mind or wherever it came from, I was inspired. Yes, very romantic, indeed.

My relationship with music is emotionally abusive. I love the songs that are about pain and misery and literally murdering the person you love. Does that make me a sicko?

I think that’s beautiful. I think there’s a beauty in that, and that you can’t really find the beauty in just a flower or a nice sunset. I think beauty has a bit of ugly in it, to give it traction. To let you understand what the beautiful part is, sometimes you need murder or death or tragedy. It gives the good feeling something to reflect against. I think all good stories have it. Some have more, some have less. The ones that have none at all, and are just purely love based romances, those are just the most boring. You’d have to have no brain cells to like a song that goes like “I met a girl and she was really great and we fell in love and we got married and I had kids with her and we never actually died and it was wonderful.” Fuck you. You know, I don’t want to listen to that. But people make songs like that, and they make a lot of money with it, but I think that those people are stupid and the people that like it are stupid, and I don’t care about stupid people I guess. I want people to think, and they do. If they’re not challenged, they won’t.

Do you write songs based on your personal experiences?

I hadn’t in the past. I only used narrative. A character or protagonist with a problem that needs solving. They are like little tiny vignettes, little stories, and they should come across as that, and when they don’t, it’s a failure. Recently, on the new record, I’ve been experimenting with songs that are sort of in that same structure, but way more personal. I love a dual, layered song. The nature of the song can seem like one thing, but there’s a hidden meaning to it. I’ve been trying to hide in some personal stuff lately, which has been really fun. It used to just be hiding in stuff about religion or my belief structure or moral and ethical things, but now I think I’m finally ready. Writing a song about your girlfriend or boyfriend or family or your life is an easy trap to fall into, because it’s really easy to do badly. Most people do it badly, because that’s where they start out writing. I didn’t start there, because I know it’s such a prickly pear. I spent so much time getting away from that, but now I feel like it takes balls to be that honest, so I’m trying to do that song, but do it really well. It’s fucking scary. But I just try and challenge myself. If you take off all the armor of being a fiction writer, and just start writing your autobiography, that’s scary. I’m not ready to do that all the way.

For me, writing is like therapy. I put myself in the story to work out the issue, and then when I finish it, it’s resolved. Do you have that experience?

A lot of times they aren’t personal problems I have. I obviously don’t have the problem that the character from Barbara Ann has, but I can put myself in other people’s situations. I’m very empathic. I think that is a gift of good song writers, to understand what it’s like to be in somebody else’s shoes. I’ve been in a lot of different roles in my life, so maybe that’s why I’m good at that. I’ve had a million jobs and lived a million places and lives. They don’t really provide closure, sometimes they provide a new problem. So that’s cool. I’m like, wow I never even thought about that problem until now. It’s sort of like reverse therapy, but it’s good to think about these things, whether you resolve it or not, it makes you more aware of hypothetical situations you could be in. Maybe I’m learning lessons or exorcising demons or creating more problems for myself. I don’t know, but I know I love the process. I really love the songs. I love them like children that need care and attention. When they come to life and they’re good, I feel better than anything in the world. I gain mostly joy from the process, or else I wouldn’t do it.

When did you start making music?

The first band I liked was NWA. My friend stole the tape from Fred Meyer’s, which is a drug store. I was like, “This is really bad, I like this.” They were saying bad words and talking about fucking and I was so drawn to it. And then when I was 9 or so, my friend gave me a Guns ‘N Roses tape, and I completely identified with it. It became my mantra. I went home and cut all my jeans, and we were really poor, and my sister was so pissed she beat the shit out of me. I really got into rock n’ roll for about a week after that, because of this tape. So that went on for a while, but it seemed really unattainable, because in the “Welcome To The Jungle Video,” Axl Rose comes to LA to get famous, and he ends up on drugs and turns into a demon woman prostitute. I was like, “Well, I love rock n’ roll, but not enough to do that. I don’t want to end up on a bus doing heroin.” And then Nirvana came out. And I was watching the video on TV with my brother, and he told me they were from Seattle, and I was blown away that a band could be from Seattle. My brother was like “Yea, dummy, bands can be from anywhere.” Right after that, I went out and bought a piece of shit guitar that was all warped from the sun, and I’ve been playing ever since.

I’m fascinated by people’s stories of rebellion, how they channeled their feelings of awkwardness and not belonging into some kind of creative outlet. My secret dream is to be a singer. I always wish that when I was younger, my angst and rebellion manifested itself through art, but instead I was just a crazy depressed anorexic.

I think everyone’s a singer. I think you’re a singer as much as I’m a singer. I don’t believe in training or school of any kind. Ever. Maybe half of high-school. If you drop out junior year you’re probably smart enough.

So no need for AP Art History?

I have no idea what that means and I’m doing fine. I’m dead serious. Don’t go to school to learn how to sing. Those kind of standards are put down on us like a prison cell, to be this good all the time. Where music came from, the blues and real country music and Appalachian music, people just sang because they were fucking bored, and they had the folk tradition in them and everybody sang, even if they weren’t very good. I’m sure the really bad ones were encourage to dance instead, but you were still a part of it. That’s what I’m trying to make with this thing, a return to a more classic concept of what music really is. I would encourage anyone in the world to cover my songs or to sing them better if they think they can. I don’t really think of myself as a good singer, I think of myself as a soulful singer. I think that’s a difficult thing for people to do, to shed off the caring of how they sound.

When did you pick up the baritone, throaty singing style?

On the last record. Before that, I didn’t really do it. I got this old ribbon microphone, the kind that they used on the radio in the 40′s. The way that they’re designed, they’re very active, they pick up a lot of sound, so you’re able to sing more quietly than you would with a regular microphone. I used to record my songs on the mic that came with the Apple computer, but then I got this decent microphone and I realized you could sing a little quieter and you could actually hear it, and it forced me to play a little quietly and find guys that understand the subtlety of old music. Everyone’s so concerned with being loud all the time, I’m trying to be loud when it’s important, but not all the time. It’s about the balance.

What do you think about this whole nostalgia for everything old that’s so popular right now. This whole culture of artisanal everything?

Pickled everything…

Right. Making our own sodas even though we worked for very long, and spent a lot of money, to try and invent faster, cheaper way to make soda.

Even the guitar I play is really antiquated. I love it to death, but stringing it is a nightmare. I spend all this time stringing it, and I know we’ve come up with a better system, but it’s so faithful to the era in which it was developed. It’s so crucial to the sound.  Sometimes things like that can be more difficult, but you learn something in the process, there’s so much more thought and care involved. I say that now, but I have a Gretsch endorsement, and I love Gretsch.

What’s the most important element of your songs?

Vocals, definitely. A bad singer and bad lyrics will sink it. I despise bands that say nothing. Sigur Rós is a perfect example of a band that chose to say nothing, but they sound amazing live. Mentally I just can’t get over that their music says nothing. I’m not interested in nothing. There’s enough nothing in the world. There’s enough empty thought. If you have the opportunity to say something and make it count, then you should say what you want to say. And if what you want to say is nothing, I always end up not wanting to listen. I hope to steer the trend away from party music and songs about pizza and hamburgers. It needs to exist, but it doesn’t all need to be like that. Sincerity is really important, and sarcasm, although it can be a sign of intelligence, can be the worst thing sometimes.

What are you currently listening to?

The Rolling Stones. I’m interested in sexy music right now. The next album is called Fear, but it’s also about sex. I find that those two emotions are very closely related. I think because it’s a right of passage to become sexual, so it’s scary for most people. It’s a horrifying process of embarrassment. For guys it’s like “Will I ever lose my virginity?” and for women the cliche is “Will I ever find true love?” I love the thought of that fear never really leaving; it’s a childhood fear that you carry with you.

What’s the best part about being in love or lust?

They are two very different things. The best part of being in love is feeling good, that serotonin kick you get all the time. When you’re in love, you feel real good and things make sense and everything is telling you to make babies and just keep doing it forever. Lust is similar, but it’s darker and there’s more fear involved

Bleached played the Troubador the other night for the final date of their national tour in support of their extra-excellent debut album Ride Your Heart, and in short,  it was the best (I am a talented and multifaceted writer). It could be argued that I am a tad bit biased, as lead singer Jennifer Clavin is maybe my roommate and always lets me borrow her cardigans and bought me Del Taco yesterday, but as far as I know Grammy.com doesn’t live in our house (unless they’ve been squatting in the garage without our knowledge) and they also thought the show was awesome, so those questioning my credibility can suck it. (You can however continue to question my personal style, my excessive use of parentheses, and my taste in television shows).

It was basically as if all the cool weirdo high school kids highjacked the bus taking them to Disneyland for the end of the school year party and made it drop them off so they could go crazy bananas nuts for their favorite band ever. These kids knew all the words, had no personal space issues, and at least 10 percent of them felt compelled to rush the stage to make-out with Jen mid-song before gleefully diving face-first back into the crowd. Not to be redundant and repetitive, but it was the best, and for at least a few hours after, my perennial malaise went missing in the afterglow of such pure, unadulterated fun.

I made Jen do this interview about the show while she was driving back from the Passport office today:

(All photos by Rick Rodney)

Welcome home Jen. It’s been really lonely at the house without you. I’ve talked to the cats a lot more than usual.

Jennifer: Awww. I’m leaving in three days!

I can’t talk about that right now, it’s too painful. Let’s talk about the show at the Troubador the other day. It was pretty fucking awesome. How did you feel about it?

J: It was so fun. I was just telling my friend Andrew that I was so bummed he didn’t come, because Mika Miko was his favorite band, and it was crazier than a Mika Miko show!

So let’s talk about how you were essentially molested by 15-20 under 18 children on stage in front of your parents. What was that like?

J: (Laughs). I just thought it was really funny. I think everyone that was coming up to kiss me was just having a lot of fun, and it was so innocent, you know?

Why do you think it was mostly girls?

J: Okay, see first of all, I couldn’t see who was kissing me, so I could kind of sometimes tell it was a girl, but I was so into playing the music and making sure my guitar wasn’t getting out of tune or the mic stand wasn’t moving, and it was all so fast. But I think that’s very interesting (laughs).

I think maybe one of the coolest moments was after the first girl stormed the stage to make-out with you, and you told the security guard not to kick her out.

J: First of all, she was so excited to be at the show, and if she had gotten kicked out, I would have felt so bad.

She definitely got bold after that and came up several more times. I was impressed with her bravado.

J: I mean I wasn’t telling him, “oh no she can keep coming up”, I just didn’t want her to get kicked out of the show. One time when we were playing with Mika Miko, and this boy was crowd surfing, and security just took him and grabbed him and threw him outside, and I stopped playing. We had just started, and I was like “we’re not finishing our set until you let this boy back in.” It was at the Echoplex, and it took like 5 or 10 min but they let him back in and then we finished playing.

That’s rad. Let me ask you, how did you keep your focus and not lose your concentration when these kids kept grabbing your mouth away from the mic and interrupting your vocals? You never lost your stride, you were like a Buckingham Palace guard or something.

J: That was really difficult! It’s never happened where it’s been THAT crazy. I just have tunnel vision for the microphone, and I had been playing those songs every single night for 29 days in a row before that show, so I was just in the zone.

What did you like the most about your homecoming show?

J: I think just seeing everyone have such a good time and get so excited. I feel like we play a lot of shows where there are a few kids moving around, and you can tell they want to go crazy, but there are mostly people just standing there, so people are too scared to dance. I also understand, sometimes I’ll go to a show and I’ll want to be the person in the back just standing around. But a lot of times, people are just too scared, and I thought it was really awesome everyone in LA came to have a really good time.

Are you worried you might get mono now?

J: I didn’t really think about it, then two people told me I should go get checked out. But I don’t know what I would do, go to the doctor and say “I got kissed like 30 times the other night, by random fans, can you check me out?”

Your doctor will think you have issues.

J: Exactly.

You can find Bleached on Twitter, Facebook, and on tour in Europe next month while I sit in the corner of my house and stare at the wall silently in the dark waiting for them to come back. You can buy Ride Your Heart HERE.

I’m bad at show reviews (and also at hard-boiling eggs, but that’s neither here nor there) so I’ll just say that the first night of the Criminal Hygiene residency presented by Cultist and KXLU was a rousing success, if evidenced only by the fact that a higher-than-normal amount of people left their credit cards and IDs at the bar. Oh, also because Bad Antics ruled, Zig Zags fucking killed it, and Criminal Hygiene won over the crowd not only with their offerings of free pizza, but also with their very awesome live show. Special thanks to Altamont for sponsoring and Blaque Chris for DJing/twerking to Lady Gaga for all to behold.

Here are some photos by our pal Rick Rodney:

Bleached makes mostly sun-soaked dream pop that you listen to while going 90 on the freeway, in a crop top with your top down and the music on high and maybe you’re a little high from reefer. Yes, I said reefer, but what I really wanted to say was “doobie.” (Ed Note: Dad is that you?). “Outta My Mind” is a little ghostly and sort of haunted and kind of needy, but still equally as catchy as those feel-good lyrics you want to hear while skating laps around a roller rink wearing an outfit that matches the cotton candy ice cream you’re eating.

There is nothing better/worse than being completely and hopelessly fixated on someone to the point where you feel like you’re going a little insane. That kind of agonizing crush that makes you alter your route to-and-from work so that you can increase the likelihood of running into this person who will probably ignore you or send mixed messages or maybe invite you up to his bedroom to make out and hold hands but then tell you he’s not ready for a relationship and you will then sob into a pillow and tell all your friends how stupid and pathetic you are for falling for his games again. BUT WHATEVER.

Listen to their album Ride Your Heart and fill your head with things like beaches, candy, boys, fun, and motorcycles. All the good stuff. Oh, and mini-skirts.