Kevin Kelly is probably best known by the magazine of which he is Executive Editor. Wired, the self-proclaimed “voice of the digital revolution,” is his day job. Other revolutionary non-Wired involvements include publishing and editing the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news from 1984 to 1990. In 1989 he launched the first 24-hour virtual reality jamboree, and the first venue to bring VR technology to the public. He was co-founder of the Hackers’ Conference and is an early board member of the Well, the first “real” online community. Continue reading “Kevin Kelly: New World Man”
Lunch Hour
I fight hard not to swallow the moment whole
Struggle to spread the taste out long and thin
And to enjoy the slender morsels
To let them linger with the few and the far-between
The chasm of clock ticks and calendar pages
The aching hunger of days inbetween
The latent longing stirred to life
With tears that swell from the gut and into the eyes
More of a revelation than an accident
To purposefully stumble into knowing bliss
Smiling with my eyes closed
My core alive with the soft gurgle of monarch wings
Just Add Water
Water is being added to juice concentrate. The frozen mass relinquishes its tart taste, compromising its original form to create something consumable. This same phenomenon occurs everyday in various forms in the lives of people you know. A college student makes good grades and wins a scholarship to a graduate school. He sacrifices his own free time to study to make these grades. A high school football player wins games for a team and lands a spot on a college team. He also sacrifices his time, perhaps even time for a job so he can practice his football skills. Your favorite band signs a million-dollar contract to a major label and loses some of their edge to gain mass appeal.
Water is added to the lives of these people in order that they give up a bit of themselves for the consumption of others. The college student’s good standing makes the grad school look good, the football player’s field skills make his college look good, and the band’s softening makes the major label look good through mass record sales.
How does all this relate to the topic at hand? Well, what does everyone want out of this life eventually? To make a living doing what we love to do. Athletes want to get sponsored by a major company, to go to events, shows, to get free gear at the very least. Artists want to get paid to make their art so that they don’t have to wait tables to pay bills. Here’s where the water comes in: Corporate sponsors have images to uphold. Your attitude and your free time will both either somewhat dissolve, or you can keep toiling away in Podunk, Nowhere. The point is, conformity has its place, but so does having a core that’s true. People all too often co-op their baser beliefs in exchange for what they think they should do at the time. What do you really want from this life? What do you really want from your hobbies? When the water is added, how much will you give up? How much will you keep for yourself? In the end, It’s all up to you.
[SLAP Magazine, 1998]
Unwound: Our Own Way
Unwound represents a true rarity in the cluttered and mundane music milieu that engulfs us here in the late nineties. Hailing from the small but prolific indie community of Olympia, Washington, Unwound does their own thing, makes consistently incredible records, and earns respect from everyone who counts.
Justin Trosper (vocals/guitar), Vern Rumsey (bass), and Sara Lund (drums) have proven themselves time and time again as an undeniable positive force against lame music and attitudes everywhere. With their sixth proper album, Challenge for a Civilized Society (Kill Rock Stars), they’ve once again pushed boundaries that they set with their previous records. Each recording has moved in a seemingly different direction around a solid hub of ideas both musical and socio-political.
“Well, sometimes you go into the studio with an idea, and you come out with something totally different,” Justin explains. “At least that’s what usually happens to me. Every one of our records has its own purpose. I don’t think we’ve aimed too high and I don’t think any of our records are perfect.” But they are very mindful of recording techniques and the studio as an instrument. “We just started building an eight-track studio and trying to learn more about recording.
There’s always been a veil of mystery surrounding this trio, partly due to their selectivity when doing interviews. “We’ve done lots of interviews just not with any major magazines,” Justin says, “but we’ve always done interviews with fanzines. We don’t have any problems doing interviews. We’re just cautious.” This understandable caution comes from music journalists’ propensity to lump bands into movements or scenes that they have nothing to do with in an attempt to pigeonhole the band’s sound or attitude. Unwound has been called “The West Coast Fugazi” and “The West Coast Sonic Youth” more times than I’d like to count, but they don’t have much in common with those bands other than their independence and the fact that they’ve toured with both. “I feel like we have our own thing,” Justin says seriously. “Definitely earlier on we were inspired by those bands, but now when people say that, I don’t really have anything to say about it.”
Unwound’s caution toward the music industry and their staunch independence also spill over into their emphatic dedication to their roots. All of their proper records have been released by Olympia-based Kill Rock Stars, and they’ve tried to keep ticket prices at their shows down as well. “It’s pretty hard to have five-dollar shows everywhere now. A band like Fugazi can pull it off ’cause they can kinda do what they want, charge five dollars, and everybody still gets paid. We can’t do that yet, but we still try to keep our shows down to five or six dollars. Then at least if we play a shitty show, it was only five dollars, and that’s not that big a deal. The money was still better spent than going to see some bad Hollywood movie. We’re just into sticking to out roots with the five-dollar shows and staying in Olympia instead of moving to a big 
city and trying to have a higher profile. Sometimes it’s really boring, but there’s definitely a community here.”
As it gets harder and harder to find a decent listen through all the shit that just keeps coming out, rest assured that where there is a fertile independent music scene like Olympia, there will always be an Unwound putting out true-to-the-core good music.
[Originally published in the June 1998 issue of SLAP Skateboard Magazine]
Jon Katz: Geeks R Us
If you’ve ever visited the “News for Nerds” site, Slashdot, chances are you’re familiar with Jon Katz. He writes regular columns over there covering everything from the Internet as a new Enlightenment to the Columbine shootings (more specifically the effect the aftermath had on geeks in high schools across the country). Continue reading “Jon Katz: Geeks R Us”
Coffee Cup
The long-awaited move
From a rut to a groove
Another session of passive aggression
Made the transition all too smooth
My decision had long been made
Far too long had I stayed
All of my frustration lost in the translation
Only a husk of the role I’d played
As she charged me, I didn’t look up
Hands clutched around my half-empty coffee cup
Feeling more affection in the swirling convection
I did my best not to interrupt
I don’t know what it means
So I’ll take it for what it seems
Looked deep in her eyes and realized
She’d given up on all of my dreams
Godflesh: Heads Ain’t Ready
“I think Hip-hop is more important than any sort of Rock music,” states a resolved Justin Broadrick matter-of-factly. “Most of the beats are fatter and heavier than your average Rock n’ Roll riff.” Justin is the head of one of our planet’s most brutal ensembles. England’s Godflesh plows monolithic basslines and ear-searing guitar riffs over Hip-hop’s most brutal breaks. Their sound has been pummeling eardrums for nearly a decade now, and most of their fans don’t even get where the music is coming from. You see, Justin is a total Hip-hop junkie. Continue reading “Godflesh: Heads Ain’t Ready”
White: Jon Skuldt’s Rotating Cast of Noise-Makers
If K.K. Downing and K.K. Null would get together, they could be the supergroup of the new millennium. — Jon Skuldt
Sitting on the fence between genres sets an outfit up for problems from all sides. No one, from fans, to labels, to writers, knows what to do with you. Sitting decidedly on the firm line between rock and noise, Pittsburgh-via-Chicago-via-Madison’s White represents an enigma well-worth figuring out. Continue reading “White: Jon Skuldt’s Rotating Cast of Noise-Makers”
Kiss It Goodbye
“Our mission is to put the fear back into hardcore,” says stern Kiss It Goodbye guitarist Keith. Rarely does a band actually scare me, but given these guys’ varied backgrounds — believe me, no one is safe.
“Two of us were in Deadguy, three from Rorscach, one from Die 116, one from No Escape, and one from a German band called Ambush,” Keith says of this four-piece. He added it all up for me, but I couldn’t explain it to someone else even if I wanted to.
“Very, very few things come before any band I’m in,” lead vocalist Tim begins explaining Kiss it Goodbye’s genesis. “But on occasion some things do come before the band, and certain things led to Seattle, and me having to live here. So that basically broke up Deadguy.”
“From there me and Tim decided to stick together,” Keith jumps back in explaining how the above math added up to rounding up drummer Andrew and bassist Tom to solidify and relocate Kiss It Goodbye to Seattle. “The whole thing is based around the fact that Tim was moving to Seattle.”
“Jaws always drop when I tell people that I had some band and they followed me out here,” Tim says laughing.
“Like the stupid pet dogs that we are!” adds Keith.
Kiss It Goodbye run their grooves deep into your skull, whether you’re listening or not. Their songs pay no mind to your ears and bore directly into your brain. Live these four guys act as starving caged animals, prowling around the much explored territory between hardcore and metal (Keith is metal. Tim is decidedly not metal). They painstakingly seek out the heaviest and most piercing aspects of both and weild them with deadly precision. It’s more than enough to scare the shit out of you.
Kiss It Goodbye is currently negotiating a deal with Revelation records, with a tentative time line that puts them in the studio with Billy Anderson (Neurosis, Mr. Bungle, Melvins, etc.) in November, the record out in February, and them on the road in April. But back to the debate at hand…
“What do you think would get a bigger reaction: a Minor Threat cover or a Slayer cover?” Tim queries pondering the roots of today’s hardcore fans. “Isn’t it weird that it’s debatable?”
[SLAP Magazine, 1997]
[photos by Roy Christopher]
Ron Wilkerson: Get Yours
Ron Wilkerson has been with the sport of freestyle BMX since before it was even a sport. He was one of the handful of riders in the early eighties who were bored with racing and wanted a little more out of their twenty-inch bikes. Ron is also the only one of those handful of riders who is still and active force in shaping the sport he helped start. Continue reading “Ron Wilkerson: Get Yours”