The Counterforce No. 24
Love, Death & Photosynthesis, Jenny Mae, Dillinger Four, Women's World Cup, and more...
I’ve started recording The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass audiobook. You can listen to the first hour now. My first audiobook and it’s a lot more complicated than I thought. Plus some unexpected car trouble has really put a dent in the budget. I’m taking pre-orders now, it’ll come out in November, much appreciated if you can help out. Or if you’ve been hesitating about buying the physical book, here’s a good way to gauge if you’d be into it. Read in the Young Southpaw voice, as I’ve always imagined it. I actually wrote the first draft with Southpaw as the narrator before deciding I wanted the book to be a little different.
I recently read Bela Koe-Krompecher’s Love, Death & Photosynthesis and I cannot recommend it enough. Like the blurbs on the back cover warn, it will break your heart and make you cry, but my god, this is an excellent book. Sure to resonate with any of us who have been part of the indie-rock scene since the 80s. Bela manning his own strong post, working at Used Kids Records and running the Anyway label, completely entrenched in music. At the heart of the book are his relationships with and the tragic stories of Columbus luminaries Jerry Wick (Gaunt) and Jenny Mae Leffel. Bela writes with a huge love for both of them, while also giving a stark, harrowing account of Jenny Mae’s decades-long battle with her demons, and the drink and drugs that left her homeless for years and many times hospitalized before passing away in 2016. Wick, with his boundless energy and mission to take over the world, was senselessly struck dead by a drunk driver in January 2001. While overwhelming tragedy and struggle are present on every page, there’s also a huge sense of the power of music, and the enthusiasm and love of what it means to be young (and not so young) and be involved in it all. And so many great bands pass thru playing at small clubs before they came to national attention - GBV, Mudhoney, Pavement to name but a few.
And I’m psyched to be doing a reading with Bela at Two Dollar Radio HQ in Columbus on Thursday September 7th, 8PM. Really looking forward to this. Two Dollar Radio is awesome - curated indie bookshop/vegan café. I stopped in on the second day of the tour back in February and really dug the place. This will be part of the last run of readings for The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass, I hope to see a few of you out there. I’ll also be hitting Omega in Dayton - being the home of GBV, I always love stopping in Dayton - Culture Clash in Toledo, and then the final day I’m at Your Media Exchange in Ann Arbor, MI at 1PM and then Found Sound in Ferndale at 4PM. Never been to Michigan before and part of the great thing about getting out there and doing this stuff is visiting places I’ve never been and meeting peeps I only know from the internet along the way.
I’ve been listening to a ton of Jenny Mae lately. Her Don’t Wait Up For Me is a wonderful, wonderful record. So much so that often when I discover an artist I’ll blaze through their catalogue, searching out all the gems. But with this I’m really taking my time before I move on to her other albums, letting the songs continue to unfold to me. One of the best records of beautiful lush 60s & 70s-esque sometimes country-tinged pop filtered through a 90s indie-rock lens.
Jim Ruland’s Message From The Underworld Substack is one I’m always sure to read, and a couple weeks ago he posted some good punk rock tunes that I’d never heard before, including ‘Gainesville’ by Dillinger Four. Within seconds of pressing play I had a big smile on my face and was bobbing along. This is exactly the sort of music I love - catchy as hell and driving powerhouse energy. I dialed up Civil War, their 2008 album from which ‘Gainesville’ hails, and fell in love. Almost every song is an anthem. It’s what I want Fall Out Boy to sound like all the time and occasionally reminded me of MCR. Great energetic punk rock. Be sure to check out Jim’s Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records. A killer book. So full of detail and info that the sections on the first wave - Black Flag, Minutemen, Hüsker Dü - felt like a complete work in and of itself, and with so much having already been presented, I was pleasantly surprised to remember all the awesome stuff coming after that - Dinosaur, Sonic Youth, Bad Brains…
And how about that Women’s World Cup?! Getting up at, or staying awake until, 4AM to watch some of those matches definitely took its toll, and it felt like I was sleep-deprived all month, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well done, Spain! I was following them closely since the beginning and they totally deserved it. Olga’s goals were fantastic. I’m a huge fan of the Swedish team too. Kaneryd has such awesome speed, and Mušović is an incredible keeper. 11 saves against the US! And the heartbreaking finish to that match, with the millimeter goal. I was fully supporting the US, and being a Portland Thorns fan, awesome to see Sophia Smith out there. She’s amazing. Megan Rapinoe commenting on the dark humor of her missing her PK in her last international appearance perfectly in line with her total Right On-ness. And one of my favourite things of the tournament was Björn hugging Mušović after that save in the bronze medal game. I love when an accidental moment of pure joy can take you out of time and space like that
Of course there’s still so much work to be done to bring equality to the game. All that the Spanish team has had to deal with, continuing right through their receiving their medals. C’mon! I read Suzanne Wrack’s A Woman’s Game last week. Further eye-opening to all the injustices women have had to face just to be able to play a sport they love. In England, from 1921, women were effectively banned from playing for 51 years. And incredibly the proceeds from women’s matches at the time all went to charity. A lot of money too. To help war veterans. Impossible to view the ban as anything other than sexism, pure and simple. This book, along with Caitlin Murray’s The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women Who Dreamed Big, Defied the Odds, and Changed Soccer, really offer a great look at the monumental struggles women have always faced to play the beautiful game. That there were only 3 people waiting at the airport for them when the US team came back from that first World Cup in 1991 has always stuck with me. How much they had to put in just to make it happen. Huge, one might think insurmountable, obstacles, and if not opposition, then indifference. And look what it’s become, with millions now watching across the globe. But there’s still so much to be done. This year the Jamaican team had to crowdfund just getting to the tournament. And there is no logical excuse for the disparities in pay, especially when our women’s team continually outperform our men’s team.
SEVEN SONGS
Jerry Wick - ‘Love, Death + Photosynthesis’. The song from which Bela took the title of his book. Lovely slice of heartfelt, country-tinged indie-rock
Moviola - ‘Color Copy’. Happy that Bela’s book reminded me how much I dig Moviola. Takes me right back to just after college, living in Boston, surrounded by a room full of music and books to which it seemed the world was made up of. Or should be.
The Replacements - ‘When It Began’. The weather started to turn autumnal yesterday evening so I decided the only thing for it was to make a Replacements playlist and go for a long walk. Being back in my hometown this particularly resonated, as for me - besides being the perfect sound of autumn - The Replacements capture that being stuck in a small American town vibe better than anything else I know.
Vibralux - ‘Hercules’. Despite not moving on to the full album yet, I have checked out Jenny Mae’s Vibralux band. It’s too cool a band name not to. Great melodies here.
The Indelicates - ‘Beyond The Radio Horizon’. Often I’ll remember an Indelicates song I haven’t listened to in a while and get incredibly excited that I get to hear it again. One of my favourite bands - great lyrics, infectious tunes. Their Songs For Swinging Lovers is one of my all-time fave albums. I remember when that came out, my last.fm was showing I’d listened to a number of its songs 13-15 times on the first day of release. A great later cut here.
seablite - ‘Breadcrumbs’. Very cool video. Watching it, I felt I was back in 1992 for three and a half minutes. A good thing. If you’re looking for a new Lush…
Died Pretty - ‘Blue Sky Day’. A band I’d been meaning to check out for years. Always sad to only get around to listening until after someone - frontman Ron S. Peno - has passed away. Wonderful pop here. I would’ve loved this back in 1992 too.
I’m also collecting all these Seven Songs lists here on a monster Apple playlist