Disintegration #thecure

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When NOFX’s Coaster came out, I was blogging about guitar and music. I emailed and requested an interview with El Hefe and didn’t expect much. Not a lot of people granted interviews, especially by email volleys, but I had some success here and there so I figured I would try.

And he said yes.

We bounced emails back and forth and I got a pretty decent interview out of it for an amateur blogger operating out of his bedroom in a desperate attempt to distract himself from dissatisfaction with work and a growing clinical depression.

But the reason I didn’t expect a reply wasn’t because I was bad at blogging or small. I’m not awful at writing and consistently ranked in the top 5-10 guitar blogs in a time when blogs were pretty big.

No. It was because NOFX didn’t do a lot of press. They hadn’t done a lot of press since making that decision a while after Green Day’s Dookie was released so I was blown away when anyone responded - let alone said yes and endured my multiple emails asking questions.

El Hefe was nice enough to talk to a young guitar player running a blog out of his bedroom.

I don’t think you can get much more punk than that - than supporting and nurturing someone’s aspirations when you can. I was beyond grateful and will constantly talk up NOFX for this reason.

Sure, they wrote great songs and you could absolutely see why even with short songs they were able to fill up two records with their strongest material, but more than that - to me - I love them because they’re the real deal. They are the best kinds of punks and I’ll always love them.

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Remember how I was saying that Alkaline Trio, Bad Religion, Tiger Army, and Tool all get a pass for albums that don’t hit hard for me and I’ll buy them regardless because my love for the band is greater than one miss?

This is that Alkaline Trio album.

I think I’m the weird one here because I kept seeing my friends say this was their “return to form,” but I just didn’t see that.

I’m certainly glad it came out, though. They had never gone five years between major releases before (and then followed up that stretch with SIX years between this and Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs) and I always kinda worry that a band that has so many side projects have a ticking countdown where they have to get back together by X or just settle into some other project with other people.

And when I heard this the first time I had no idea that Dan Andriano had his own side project or that it was so fuckin’ good. But I definitely knew that Matt Skiba was prolific with other projects including one that sounded an awful lot like Alkaline Trio but without Dan’s magic.

It’s not like this album is BAD, either. It just struck me as nothing really to write home about. The hooks weren’t super strong, there wasn’t a lot of experimentation, and the songwriting felt more… standard.

Out of all Alkaline Trio’s albums - hell, even their EPs and collections like Damnesia or Remains - this is the one I listen to the least.

And, again, I’m pretty sure I’m the weird one here.

It doesn’t matter, though. These guys could release anything and I’d buy it. They’ve just been my favorite band for so long, seen me through so much, that there’s no way a couple bad releases would throw me off.

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When I started collecting records, I was solidly thinking that I was only going to collect gold. I would vet the albums online and then buy the truly good stuff.

There were exceptions. A couple bands get a pass for albums that don’t hit so hard (with me) in the name of collection completion.

Namely, Alkaline Trio, Bad Religion, Tiger Army, and Tool. All of these bands have had albums that just didn’t connect with me but I love the band to such a high level that I still want their stuff on my shelf.

This is one of those albums.

Again, this is just my opinion. If you like this album (or any album I don’t particularly enjoy), I’m not going to say anything. Like what you like.

I even keep my mouth shut when people say they like Mike Patton and his various bands/projects and he’s probably my least favorite musician/creator I have ever come across in my entire LIFE.

Enjoy what you enjoy.

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It gets cold and rainy here in Germany during the fall/winter and the train station is a walk that’s a few miles away.

I like it. Walking is good for me and I like to see the countryside.

But I REALLY like walking in the rain with some super moody, super synth-heavy score playing in my ears.

I don’t know. It just fits.

People talk a lot of shit about this movie, but I really liked it. It felt like the end - the unequivocal end. No arguments about this one. No swapped-out paramedic, no climbing out of a collapsed mine into a stream, no being rescued by men in black.

There is no argument that this is the end of Michael Myers without ignoring this trilogy as a whole.

Which I’m sure is what they’ll do.

While Halloween Kills was heavy-handed, I really liked the concept of a town becoming a mob. Feels natural. And, with Ends, I liked how a basically decided that they needed SOMEONE to hate just to make themselves feel better and I loved how they all decided en masse to let that shit go and move on.

It’s a good ending. With a couple weird moments, I’ll admit.

But the score? Fantastic. I love it when composers build a score that is meant to be played as one piece of music. It gives the album a much more cohesive feel and increased my enjoyment exponentially. And it’s John Carpenter. Come on. Dude’s a legend in the studio.

Say what you will about the inaccurate mining of 80s nostalgia that’s been going on for a long time now, but I absolutely LOVE that everyone is reaching for synth scores to be the soundtracks.

It’s a great time to be alive and walking in the cold rain to the train station.

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I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a completionist and that’s why I bought this. While Alkaline Trio’s songs are decent, I’m just not a fan of Hot Water Music.

That said…

I think this template should be used WAY more in the music world. The idea of two bands coming together to make a split covering each other’s songs is a LOT of fun.

And, honestly, this doesn’t need to be a crazy affair. If you don’t want to buy studio time and hire staff, just go into a quiet room and do acoustic covers of the songs.

But you could definitely cover the studio time with this idea.

I’d buy it. Others would, too.

ESPECIALLY if it was a tour exclusive.

Imagine this: you go to a show. We’ll say Metallica with Danzig opening. Why not - it’s happened before.

You buy your ticket, stand in line, wonder if maybe Danzig is going to come on stage and sing whatever Misfits song Metallica performs that night, and you’re let in the doors. You start walking to your assigned area and pass the merch section.

You promised yourself you weren’t going to go crazy buying merch. It’s so expensive, after all and the tickets alone cost an arm and a leg. But maybe ONE thing wouldn’t hurt so your eyes start to scan past the t-shirts, patches, Yeti water bottles, and then they stop.

What is that?

What IS that?

A tour-exclusive vinyl of Danzig and Metallica playing each other’s songs? Danzig belting out “Motorbreath” King Nothing” and “Until It Sleeps” while Metallica tackles “Mother” “Twist of Cain” and “How The Gods Kill?”

AND it’s colored vinyl?

You get swept up and watch your hand give the clerk money and then take the record.

What a find.

What a souvenir!

What a treat for fans and concert-goers!

What a fun way for bands to commemorate touring together!

I definitely want to see this happen. Right now bands are just leaving money on the table by ignoring this idea.

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There’s a tweet going around… hold on… let me find it….

Found it:

John Leavitt says

“Me at 15: The Dead Kennedys are right about everything.
Me at 20: Actually, these issues are way more complex
Me at 28: But really it comes down to larger, systemic issues
Me at 35: The Dead Kennedys were right about everything.”

And, honestly, I can’t think of a better way to sum up both the significance of the Dead Kennedys and the lifecycle of a maturing punk.

They were right about an AWFUL lot of things. They had the right ideas the whole time. They called out punk for being stagnant before it even really caught on. They called out the punk scene as just a place for skinheads to throw bows. They even called out fucking GAS.

GAS! Like, this shit should be cheap because it’s a tool for us and somehow we’re letting GAS run our lives.

Astounding.

And, hey, how about the time they were brought to court on obscenity charges (thanks, Tipper Gore) and were so convincing that the prosecution OPENLY TOLD THE PRESS that 1) they, the prosecution, were wrong and 2) the Dead Kennedys’ music, statements, arguments, and stands actually made a lot of sense. It’s pretty rare for a side of a legal battle to tell the press that they were wrong the whole time. You just don’t say that. You don’t ADMIT that you were wrong to the PRESS.

When idealistic punks - the ones like me who get way too wrapped up in philosophy and never stop taking things seriously - talk about what punk rock SHOULD be, it’s the Dead Kennedys. It’s DK, Bad Brains, Bad Religion, etc but it would be tough for any band to come close to making a statement like Dead Kennedys did.

What a great band.

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Tool singer Maynard James Keenan said in his documentary about his winery that if you do anything for catharsis and find yourself doing the same thing ten years later, either it’s not cathartic or your not interested in healing.

I think about this statement that felt like a throwaway line as he was digging in dirt WAY more than one might believe.

Out of all the bands out there, I actually believe that 1) at least MJK but more and more I’m thinking the whole band are kind of done being the angry guys and 2) Tool fans, for as obnoxious as we can be (and boy can we), we’d probably give them the leeway to just record good music - the music they WANT to make.

You hear it a LOT with Fear Inoculum but I think it really starts with this album. The album starts with a warning about carrying grudges, questions the validity of vampiric activities, has mature takes on breakups, and the music is too notch. This is my favorite Tool album and the only one I would buy two copies of (if they ever come out with one that isn’t on a picture disc).

The track order theory works for playlists/burned CDs or, bare minimum, shuffling on CD. It’s tough to bounce around 4 sides to experience the parabola of the theorized track order.

It’s fine. I got alone perfectly without it for years and now that I listen to albums front to back, I’ll go back to that way.

What a great album.

And Adam Jones is one of the few guitarists that, no matter what, I find myself wanting a signature guitar from. I wish that Gibson would just release a Les Paul Custon without all the extra stuff. Just a normal silver burst in nitrocellulose lacquer. But nooooo, it’s either an Epiphone, a Les Paul STANDARD, or the expensive relic job.

Ugh.

But a big can dream, right?

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When I started collecting records, there was ZERO doubt that this was on my must-buy list. It’s one of my favorite albums ever.

I’m not really a ska guy. I cut my teeth on punk where the motto is “shit’s fucked, we gotta fix it,” and ska’s “shit’s fucked but whatevs, brah, it’s more rebellious to be happy” vibe never ever ever fully clicked with me.

Call me inherently angry.

I can take it in small doses but when a whole album is packed from front to back with goofy songs or songs that target bad stuff but then blow it off like it’s nothing, I get frustrated and bored and that’s a weird combination to be.

So when I found Less Than Jake’s “Hello Rockview” - an album FULL of of darker stuff and the courage to face it - I was hooked. It deals with the feelings of being stuck and stagnant, of realizing the life you wanted is not the life you have, of realizing you don’t really know the person next to you (you know, the one you’re judging harshly), of realizing you have to settle at some point, or realizing that your ideals will inevitably have to take a backseat to the realities of life, even more pedestrian song topics like trying to get over an ex.

This entire album is angst and existential crises all against a backdrop of happy-sounding horns and I absolutely love it. I always put it on in my friend’s car, I delivered pizza listening to it for over a year, I’ve bought it a couple times because it always disappeared in moves and, yes, I picked it up on vinyl.

What’s weird about my vinyl (or my system) is that some stuff is basically inaudible. The one-channel guitar at the beginning of “Great American Sharpshooter” is so quiet it might as well not even be there (for instance).

And I don’t know if that’s the record or my system but it sure is weird.

I still love owning this thing, though.

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I know this album has been overplayed. I get it. Basketcase and When I Come Around were proving that Green Day could write hits that won’t go away WELL before Good Riddance.

But you’ve still got to give it up for this album because it’s really, really good. The production is good, the songs are good, and this is one of those albums where the tracks that AREN’T hits might actually be better.

I mean, just think about that. How often do you get to tell someone “yeah, that song they’re famous for is great but just WAIT until you hear the rest of the album?”

Green Day is just a wild band to me. They laid the groundwork for pop punk as we know it, they’ve always done things their way, they’ve never been scared to experiment, and they’re still playing with the same passion and energy as they were when I saw them as a kid touring for Nimrod. Armstrong still pulls a kid up on stage to play his guitar and I swear to god - I can NOT imagine a better thing to happen as a kid. And as cool as it would be to play Blue, I hear now he’s using a Tele with a custom pick guard and giving them to the kids.

Could you imagine? If 14-year old me had that happen, that guitar would be my #1. I’d consider it blessed. I’d start a band the next day. I couldn’t imagine a bigger endorsement - whether it was imagine by me or not.

Honestly, I think that Armstrong and Green Day have been setting the example from day one. Success aside, if you want to be a good band and if you want to grow a following, go watch a Green Day show and take that same energy into your stage.

AND you should pay attention to how serious they are when they’re recording. They have an aloof image but I honestly haven’t seen them ever actually BE aloof. I’ve only seen them work hard at everything they’ve ever done.

I fuckin’ love those guys.

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Justice has been derided for too damn long as technical but soulless, cold, LONG, and lacking bass.

Those last two points are true enough, I guess. But there’s so much good to this album.

Yeah, I know that they went in grieving and decided to make the most challenging, technical music they could. And I know that James in particular was hit HARD by Cliff dying to the point where he didn’t seem to get over it until *checks notes* about a year before 72 Seasons came out? At the earliest when the Through the Never movie was released.

Honestly, it felt like James was holding onto his grief because he felt like letting it go would be betraying Cliff.

It’s sad.

This album is impossible to disentangle between a grieving band, a band that HAS to get back into the studio to maintain momentum, and a band that is starting to have honest to god challengers that are also gaining steam.

It had to happen and it was always going to be this, good and bad.

Yes, the songs get a little long. But I still love it. I really embraced the “shit’s fucked, let’s fix it,” attitude present in most of these songs. Everyone always talks about how negative metal is but I honestly think bands like Metallica skew so far towards “we can fix this” that they look like hippies who write good music.

I love it. Genuinely.

And “Dyer’s Eve” alone is worth the price of admission.

Probably could have cut “To Live Is To Die” altogether, though. That main Spanish section is a 40-second intro a la “Battery” and little more.

I am VERY interested in finding the elusive “And Justice For Jason,” which I understand is just this album with bass. I would buy that.

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I was in college when iTunes really started to pick up steam and become available on Windows. They ran a promotion with some soda company and, because I worked for the university and received a meal card that gave me either food or three sodas, I spent every day tipping 20oz bottle of soda to try to see the underside of the cap and find winners.

When I did (the odds were with me), I pieced this album together. Now I can’t download it again. It says it’s been downloaded too many times or on too many devices or something.

But I think it’s incredibly interesting that I went from “ooh, mp3s!” to vinyl records and digitizing the hell of them.

Digital services have been wildly disappointing and I’m tired of trying to get alone with them, so fuck it: here’s my record that I will record and re-record and re-record until the grooves widen too much or the stylus just goes right through the PVC.

What a fun EP. People say Black Sails is where the real AFI started - it’s where Davey said he actually TRIED writing songs - but I think this was where the real birth was.

Is it perfect? Almost. Their cover of Halloween goes on for WAY too long and I was forced to make an edit that fades out sooner or I’d starve between it and the next track.

But the songs are too notch and the energy can’t be beat. The guitar work is great, the pace is break-neck, the Halloween cover is awesome, and the vibe of the whole record fits perfectly with every other part of its presentation. The artwork is cool, and just look at that pretty orange vinyl!

My only real beef is that 10” records are annoying. I’ve got plenty of 7” and even more 12” but I have TWO 10” records and that just isn’t going to work for the long term.

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"It's Amazing to be Young" / Before "You I Just Forget" by Fontaines DC

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BLUF: This is my favorite Green Day album.

It goes back to their episode of Behind the Music where Armstrong’s wife said he didn’t write songs as a teenager anymore because he WASN’T a teenager. He was an adult with adult issues and he was writing adult songs.

Now, 17-year-old me did NOT like this album but I learned two critical things from it:

1) The albums that require a little more thought before going all-in as a fan are usually the best ones. They challenge you and you learn about yourself in the process.

2) She was right. I genuinely don’t think there’s anything more punk than writing mature songs about the missteps of adulthood and the frustration with a middle-aged life because that’s not what sells. That’s not what the kids (or adults who still want to cosplay as such) want so to do is to really put yourself out there and, once I heard that, it clicked for me.

I also really liked the guitar tone. Yeah, there’s a LOT of acoustic on this record but that fat P90 growl from a Les Paul Jr is really tough to beat.

I just wish this album had been more successful. I think they saw the numbers and decided to veer into the waters that have the cash. Armstrong himself said about the follow-up to this album that it’s all about being 14 and rocking out in front of your bedroom mirror.

That’s a far cry from what was said on Behind the Music and I wish we got the chance to see where a more successful WARNING: could have gone.

And, just as a side note, I love how Armstrong is constantly pushing out new signature models because out of his… three(?) generations of Gibson models, the internet seems to agree that the one that feels the closest to his #1 is actually the Epiphone and that sounds like Armstrong, proving success with Gibsons so he could give the good stuff to the poor people playing in their rooms.

Yeah. Big fan.

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I’ve got an annual tradition where I buy (at least) one new Christmas album each year. For the records, these don’t count against my budget and I am indeed limited to one purchase per year.

It’s a weird tradition, I know. But I like having a collection of… well, anything really, slowly grow over time. I suggested to my partner that we get one ornament for the tree each year and they did NOT like that idea and their “one” ornament was a 3-pack.

Anyhoo. This was 2024’s and you can’t go wrong with Bad Religion. I’ve always liked this album and I was shocked (but shouldn’t have been, I guess) to see the entire thing fit on one side. The other side is etched and the vinyl is green with gold dust in it.

Very Christmasey.

I know there’s been a lot of punk in this collection, but I actually think Christmas might be my favorite genre because since we all know the songs and melodies, we can appreciate different interpretations of them. It’s like how people used to grow up listening to standards because everyone played standards and, since you knew them, you knew when people were good (or not).

I honestly don’t think there’s a genre out there that bolsters music appreciation and dissection more than Christmas music. It’s most peoples’ first dip into jazz and classical and it serves as a fantastic bridge to genres people had been neglecting their whole lives.

Christmas music is a friggin’ miracle.

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I’m pretty new to this record and there’s a myth out there about the 7”. The myth is that there’s the A-side - the single everyone hears and loves and then the B-side is where you find the weird shit. You never know what you’re going to get. Will it be a remix of the A-side? An acoustic version or instrumental? Will it be a cover of some other band’s song that this band happens to love so much that they just had to record it?

It’s like a gotcha ball and that is exciting. I don’t even pay attention to what’s on the B-side because I want it to be a surprise.

Surprises can suck sometimes, though, like when the B-side is just another studio track of a different song from the same album.

Bro, I already own the album and now I have another record that has two songs from the album I already own. The only special thing about this is the cover art (This Addiction was Alkaline Trio’s 7th album and featured a cover with a ton of pills so this 7 and two pills couldn’t possibly be more perfect).

*sigh*

Oh well. I still liked throwing the band more of my money. They deserve all the success they can get and, honestly, that’s why I save and buy new records whenever I can.

Oh well. At least 45s are more affordable than LPs.

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