So Long, Rosedale

Warped Tour, the annual travelling music festival that has been as a key tastemaker for mainstream alternative rock for over two decades will be calling it quits after 2018’s tour season. Warped Tour started in 1995 and is North America’s longest running touring music festival, but declining ticket sales year after year have left the festival in financial hot water. American teens have generally pivoted away from Warped Tour’s mainstay genres and this has prompted many bands with careers launched or tied to Warped to retire from music earlier than rock stars of decades past. 

In more recent years, Warped Tour has undergone a lot of earned criticism after the festival hosted people who turned out to be pop-culture monsters such as the frontmen of Blood On The Dance Floor and Lostprophets who have been accused or convicted of behavior ranging from, pedophilia, solicitation of sex from minors, conspiracy to rape an infant, distribution of child pornography, and more. Pop-punk in general is not aging well and teens often seem to be looking towards other genres like hiphop or fourth and fifth wave emo bands like Tigers Jaw and Modern Baseball instead of Yellowcard and Simple Plan, and personally I say good riddance to the Warped Tour machine. While I don’t think the festival is inherently trash or responsible for the actions of a few of its alumni, the festival seems to be creating more monsters than role models in more recent memory. These days the festival leaves its performers ill-prepared for behaving appropriately and respectfully towards fans and musicians. The musicians of Warped are full-time touring artists even when not on Warped Tour, and as they travel to town during their off-season tours, they bring trouble  and delusions of grandeur with them.

Winter, 2017, a chilly night in a derelict district that hasn’t been snapped up for gentrification yet. A few young kids are crowding around outside a dive bar on Tarragona Street, some of them smoking cigarettes and sipping mystery juice out of foam gas station cups. Most of them are here to catch one of their friends’ new bands play. Inside a local band is offloading gear from the stage. It’s modest stuff mostly: off-brand guitars, Craigslists amps, and a duct-taped drum kit complete with a kick drum that has to be held in place by a cinder block. This ramshackle gear sticks out compared to the Guitar Center credit card gear backlined on the stage for the next act. This guy has racks of power amps, an Apple computer, a banner hung behind the stage with a band logo, and even a professional lighting rig like you might find on a DJ’s setup at a crowded bar.

There is a good amount of people inside, a sizeable crowd for Pensacola on a weeknight. I was looking forward to hearing the touring act Rosedale after a friend hyped the group up to me. Instead of a full-band, Rosedale turned out to be a solo performer who played a guitar along to backing tracks that were synced to videos of himself playing the other instruments back a home studio in Toronto. This was of course disappointing since the only fun part about watching pop-punk live is watching the bassist or second guitarist scramble dash to the mic to belt out some backing vocals after doing a bit of headbanging on the wrong side of the stage during a breakdown. On top ditching the band in favor of machines, Rosedale arrogantly tossed six or seven picks into the crowd throughout his set, as if the crowd was just clamoring for souvenirs from the show even though no one was dashing to grab these picks from the floor. I imagine Rosedale learned this trick from Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World who had pulled the same pompous pick-tossing schtick over and over and over when Jimmy played in town a few months later.

Rosedale recently announced his retirement from music in a laughably pompous blog post in which he calls people who don’t like his forgettable, semen-soaked brand of pop-punk “sheep” and “shallow.” Rosedale is a graduate of Warped Tour, and his behavior seems to perfectly exemplify the kinds of looneys that Warped Tour’s machine has cultivated then released onto small town America. As Rosedale says farewell with one last US/Canada tour, I would like to take a look back at where this hopefully dying breed of pop-punker has gone wrong as well as examine the damage that some graduates of Warped Tour and other fame machines wreak on smaller towns with their misbehavior and entitlement issues that likely began with their appearances at Warped Tour.

Maybe this all seems like a little melodramatic hate mail at this point, and before Rosedale’s most recent stop in Pensacola I probably would have agreed with you, but on the day of Rosedale’s latest show in my hometown, Rosedale began serially harraassing several of my friends via Facebook Messenger. These were people who he had either briefly spoken to, or people he had sent friend requests to on Facebook after his previous show. On the night of his latest show, he sent out messages that seemed like nice, casual show invites, but quickly escalated into harassment and guilt trips. He guilted one girl for not being able to come due to work, saying “you’ve known about this for weeks,” despite the fact that the girl was covering for a sick employee at her mother’s small business. Rosedale told another friend of mine Perry to make sure that his band practice didn’t run late so Perry could make it to the show. What Perry friend was actually practicing for was a paid gig with a symphony orchestra, not a garage rock band with a couple of bros. After Perry made this clear to Rosedale, Rosedale then asked Perry how far he lived from Atlanta or Birmingham (both over four hour drives) and implied that he should drive four plus hours the next night to catch one of Rosedale’s shows. With over 3,000 Facebook friends, it’s probable that Rosedale does this kind of serial guilt-tripping everywhere he goes on tour. I’ve attached screenshots of several of these interactions below. It seems that Rosedale feels he has a certain entitlement to fame that he has definitely not achieved yet. 

A brief survey of Rosedale’s history shows that his entitlement to fame has come about despite any real shot at achieving critical mass. His claim to fame is seems to be that he did a stint on Warped Tour in the early 2010s. From what I can gather from his website bio, it sounds like what actually happened is Rosedale followed the Warped Tour around the country in 2012 or 2013 and played parking lot sets early in the morning and late at night as an unofficial act. According to his bio after continuing this parking lot sideshow for a few weeks, he was invited to play official sets as part of Warped. This accomplishment, in his mind, seems to be the event that solidified his perceived trajectory for his life: he was great, worthy of admiration and destined for fame because he had played at the already fizzling-out punk rock summer camp that was Warped. He had earned (or earned via pressure) the official pop-punk seal of approval. 

After looking at some data on Rosedale, I have a better understanding of what’s going on. Despite participating in Warped Tour and having toured extensively in the United States and Canada, Rosedale’s streams and sales numbers are dismal. His top-selling album on Bandcamp, 2016’s self-titled record, has only seven sales. Many bands just starting out beat those numbers in a single year. His top track on Spotify, “Sustain,” has a little over 5,000 streams, a pittance worth about $5 in Spotify bucks. These stats seems to be indicators mainly of Rosedale’s dated-sounding music and unrelatable lyrics. His numbers are especially low for an artist based in one of North America’s largest cities (Toronto) where a larger urban population usually meant that artists can gain a larger, more rabid fanbase than their small-town counterparts. In reaction to his poor numbers, Rosedale seems to have chosen to lash out at what he calls “confused fans.” Below I’ve pulled a few quotes from Rosedale’s two latest blog posts to show what lashing out looks like for him. 

“It’s been interesting to see the people that truly enjoy my music get excited and encourage this next chapter while, on the other hand, seeing the fans who only come inside for the “Take On Me" cover post the same crying emojis they decline my show invites with… and how they’ll miss Rosedale.”

“The more I "grow” this “business”, the more I realize it's almost a semi-charity.”

“I played a Deathcab For Cutie cover set (as one of my three acoustic sets) at my show in Seattle last week and everyone in the room, myself included, was surprised at how many songs I knew word-for-word from these Seattle legends."

“I’ve even had venue employees come offer me pot for my travels even though I don’t smoke pot. And I’ve lost count of how many drink offers I’ve turned into merch sales.”

From these few quotes, a few gems pulled from recent blog posts, I’ve gathered that Rosedale seems to be in a constant state of examining whether or not the people at his shows are participating in a “proper” way. If you aren’t dancing your ass off and then buying merch from the band after already paying a cover for entry, Rosedale thinks you are doing something wrong. There are wrong ways to participate of course, getting belligerently drunk and trying to start a mosh pit when nobody is clearly into it for example is not a very positive way to participate in a show and create a fun environment. But for me I don’t have a problem with people not being “into” a performer’s music enough. I spend a big enough chunk of my life going to shows, watching mediocre bands, planning shows, and just talking shop about music in general that sometimes the last thing I want to do is watch a band’s set, especially if that act is Rosedale. Instead, I spend time at shows catching up with friends outside the venue, people who I rarely get to see. I don’t feel like I’m being rude or wrong by doing that. Just like men in general need to accept and believe that women do not owe men time, attention, or sex, musicians like Rosedale need to learn that people at his shows or in places he’s toured to do not owe him attention, patronage, their hard-earned cash, or anything else at all. There’s something breathtakingly pathetic about a grown-ass man trying to guilt people into going to his shows. If people want to see the show, they’ll be there. Throwing side eyes at those who don’t properly participate in his shows is not kind of behavior that will help Rosedale attain the fame he so urgently desires. His epiphany that he runs a “semi-charity” and bragging about converting drink offers into merch sales points toward an inability to treat the people he meets as people. Instead he seems to treats them as transactions. Without a capacity for self-awareness, Rosedale’s music career was doomed to fail from the start.

Perhaps the most bizzare entry in Rosedale’s discography is the 2014 single “Taylor Swift,” a song that demonstrates Rosedale’s Trump-esque inability to shut the fuck up. Rosedale Mike describes the track as “[an] out-of-left-field, tongue and cheek T-Swift love song” in which he details a crush on pop star Taylor Swift. The lyrics to “Taylor Swift” are laughable at best and creepy at worst with an accompanying music video seems cooked up by someone overdetermined to go viral. Some of the creepiest lines include “I went to all my favorite adult websites to find girls that look like you [Taylor Swift], but they weren’t the same,” and “Your curves, that ass, sorry I haven’t grown up yet but I would to be with you // oh the things I’d do with you.” The song’s inventory Swift’s body parts contain the kind of musings that most millennial musicians with any degree of self-awareness would have decided not to pursue. It’s seems like an attempt to cash in on a celebrity’s fame via name drop, a subject which Father John Misty already thoroughly explored in a 2015 feud with Ryan Adams after Adams released a entire cover record of Taylor Swift’s album 1989. Misty’s main critique of Adams’ record is that Adams was trying to make his name pop up whenever Swift fans search for 1989 online (read: synergy), and this critique is also true of Rosedale’s “Taylor Swift.” The track communicates nothing of value to the kinds of people Rosedale will actually be engaging with. Instead of seeking to communicate with fans, he is seeking to communicate with fame, a recurring Rosedale tick that seems to have sabotaged any authenticity and relatability that Rosedale had to begin with.

Interview w/Bike Thiefs (Toronto)

Bike Thiefs (Toronto) from left to right: Kris (bass), Marko (guitar + vocals), Andrew (drums)

I stumbled upon the Canadian post-punk band Bike Thiefs sometime late last summer while I was combing through music press websites doing PR work for my own band's debut EP. I was instantly impressed with Bike Thiefs latest EP "Lean Into It." When I heard their tour would be passing through town, I knew I wanted to land an interview with them. We sat down with Kris, Marko, and Andrew last weekend before their show at Chizuko in Pensacola to talk the Toronto music scene, gear, Marko's writing process, and more.

N: So, Mississauga and Toronto -- I've seen Bike Thiefs listed as a Mississauga band and a Toronto band at various points. The cities are very close to each other right?

Andrew: They're about half an hour apart.

N: Are there any big differences between the two?

Andrew: Mississauga is more of a suburb and Toronto is more of a city, the metropolis.

N: And which do you all live in now? I've seen you listed as both.

Marko: Andrew lives in Toronto. Kris lives in Mississauga. I'm in the process of moving to Toronto. Not downtown Toronto, but I'll be in Toronto proper.

Andrew: He's on the subway line.

Marko: Yeah. I think that the difference is for bigger tours when we're further from home, people don't know what Mississauga is, so it's just easier to say we're from Toronto. When we're in southern Ontario it's a lot easier to just say we're a Mississauga band. I know there's definitely a little bit more hubris or pride with being like Toronto band . . .

N: Like a scene pedigree kind of thing?

Marko: Yeah. . . Mississauga has a handful of really good bands, but ten years ago there were a lot of bands, it was very active but now . . .

Kris: . . . the scene is dead there.

Marko: Yeah, it's moved out into the city and people just kind of have to focus on playing in Toronto. It's also just Toronto's proximity to Mississauga. It just doesn't feel like there's a point to compete with that when you can just work with all that we have available in Toronto.

Andrew: And also, a lot of the venues in smaller towns and cities have shut down and nothing has replaced them. There are fewer and fewer places to play.

N: Is Toronto very very urban? Densely packed and all that?

Marko: Yeah.

N: Do you have a practice space there?

Marko: So, we actually practice in Mississauga.

N: It's easier to get a space there I'd imagine.

Marko: Yeah, and it's my mom's basement [laughter].

N: Cool. We don't have basements here in Florida, and practices and shows and everything would be way easier if we did. I've seen you describe yourselves as a "grammatically-inept three-piece rock band." What prompted you to use that phrasing? Did any big grammatical errors in some Bike Thiefs lyrics prompt you to use that particular descriptor?

Marko: No, it's just trying to beat people to the punch with the name because it should be Bike Thieves, not Bike Thiefs. I think the name came from our friend Kyle who used to be in the band. It was an homage to the Toronto Maple Leafs, the hockey team, and it just kind of stuck. I don't think there is any grammatical ineptitude in the lyrics. I'm really picky . . . I like when things don't rhyme and when rhymes are a little bit off, but the grammar I like to keep tight, unless it sounds good to not.

N: That makes sense. I didn't even notice the error in the band name before. So, you're a three-piece band, but the songs sound really big on the recordings. I can hear guitar overdubs I think, but are there any other techniques, tricks, or gear that you use live to fill that sound out?

Marko: I will say that Kris' bass parts have become more complicated where it sounds almost like a lead or he's hitting arpeggios or chords. The rhythm section definitely fills it out, and to make the highs sound more high I definitely like to pull back more and play simpler riffs or thinner chords where I'm only hitting two notes at once, even if they're ugly chords, instead of full bar-chords.

Andrew: It's a less is more type situation.

N: So you think it sounds bigger by kind of minimizing what you're playing a little bit?

Kris: Yeah, dialing back a little bit.

N: Do you have anything to add on that, Andrew?

Andrew: I think we try to keep it so that the live show is as close to the record as it can be, that way people don't come expecting one thing and it be too thin. . . We've been told we're loud [laughter] I think we're just a loud band naturally.

*Editor's note: I mentioned what I thought were guitar dubs on the Bike Thiefs record, but when I saw them live, I was very surprised that the recordings contain very few dubs if any. The band is actually just very tactical about their sound. Marko and bassist Kris both know how to utilize the entire fretboard of their instruments in a way that makes things sound huge, from Kris' impressive bass harmonics to Marko's dashes from center stage back to his guitar amp, holding his Fender Jazzmaster up to his amplifier at just the right moment to create some feedback before dashing back to his microphone to bark out a lyric.*

N: Is it hard pulling off some of your riffs and singing at the same time, or do you have that down by now?

Marko: I think I write to my strengths. I'm good at dodging my weaknesses. Some of the new stuff we are writing is more rhythmic and more weird, so I have to push myself and make things a bit more difficult to manage that.

N: The new stuff is difficult lyrically?

Marko: It's usually just difficult matching the rhythm of the guitar with rhythm of lyrics and not tripping over one or the other. With the new stuff we definitely want to add more layers and studio tricks because the last two things we did we kind of pulled back, and I'm really happy with how that turned out, but I do want to pepper in some stuff too.

Andrew: Spice it up a bit.

N: Of course. Any favorite pieces of gear right now that you've picked up that's surprised you with how much you've come to use it?

Marko: I got this TC Electronic Hall of Fame Reverb pedal, and it has this one effect on it that's got that real natural kind of shoegaze woosh sound, and if you turn it all the way up it sounds like you're using like a tremolo bar to bend the notes. As they decay, the pitch also kind of falls down, so you get some real blurry sounds.

N: Cool. Kris, Andrew, anything to add?

Andrew: I don't have it yet, but I just locked down an Orange County Snare. It's a studio snare and kind of a dream piece of gear that I've always wanted but it's always been out of my price range. I found a really affordable one in Texas.

N: What make it so unique?

Andrew: They were hand-built in the US. Now it's all machine-made overseas, so there's a lot of love that's gone into it. This one is completely custom, but it just happens to be what I would've gone for if I were to submit my own order. It's really nice, a nice green.

N: Anything from you Kris?

Kris: I've been using a really subtle tremolo on the bass to make the cleans sound a little prettier. It's surprised me how well it works, so I've stuck with that.

N: You all sound like a band to me that gets thrown on a lot of diverse shows because you pull from a lot of musical traditions, and so people can kind of listen to you and hear something that reminds them of a multiple kinds of music at once. With that kind of sound which in my opinion enables a wide appeal, what's your experience been like in the Toronto and Mississauga scene? Likes, dislikes, or frustrations? Are there any bands you particularly enjoy playing with up there? 

Marko: As far as bands go, I think the best band right now in Toronto is maybe Casper Skulls, who are friends of ours. They're just incredible. They're tight. It's remarkable not only how great a band they are but how quickly they've figured out how to work together. They always blow me away. There's a bunch of other bands in the area that we love. Greys, Beliefs, The Dirty Nil we're huge on, and our friends in Output.

Andrew: Mass, Pup.

Marko: Yeah. There's so much fantastic music coming out of Toronto and southern Ontario right now, it's overwhelming.

N: It's a good time to be there I take it?
Marko: Yeah. New Fries are really weird and amazing.

Andrew: Single Mothers from London.

N: London, Ontario?

Andrew: Yeah.

N: So do y'all not have to play bad shows anymore? Or like shows or lineups where you feel like Bike Thiefs is the weird band out?

Marko: We definitely have done that, but Toronto's really good . . . like if we play with another band that doesn't sound like us, but if they're just as weird or niche, you'll get an audience that wants weird music even if it's a really disparate group of bands. We're pretty lucky that way. Every once in a while there's shows that feel off, but in Toronto though, that doesn't happen much anymore. On tour it happens here and there.

Andrew: In Toronto we try to limit how many shows we play and I think because we do that we get to be a little bit more picky about who we play with.

N: You've been a band since 2014 and put out three EPs so far, the latest of which is 2017's "Lean Into It." Do you prefer the EP format or will there be a full-length coming down the pipeline in the future?

Kris: We're definitely going to be putting out a full-length. The EP thing . . . we've basically gone through a run of drummers. Andrew is actually our fifth drummer so from the first EP to the third EP, I think there's four different drummers. This is the first time we've kind of solidified as a band unit. We've got the people that we're all comfortable with and can start writing and put out a full-length.

2017's "Lean Into It"

N: So let's talk about a few songs briefly. One of my personal favorites from "Lean Into It" is "Carson." It seems like the song is commenting on social institutions of some kind, music scenes, church, or community of some sort. What prompted you to write that song and what do the lyrics comment on?

Marko: I like that you got church from that, that's interesting. That song is very much about agoraphobia. I have periods of that . . . I can't say acutely because I don't want to self-diagnose but I wouldn't leave the house enough. I think social media is a really terrible thing, and it really isolates people, and the lyrics are in some way verbal affirmations of "Hey, you should go to this thing," especially rock shows or whatever. The song is a little snarky with the line about networking opportunities, which is almost self-affirmation. There are healthy places to be. Don't be afraid of leaving the house or face-to-face communication. I think that's one of the best things. I think one of the things that causes lots of anxiety and depression in people is not enough community and not enough social interaction.

N: Okay, so the song is more of an affirmation of community. I originally read it as more of a critique almost, maybe it's the tone in which the vocals are sung. 

Marko: Yeah. I like when things sound funny and snarky, but it's actually very sincere.

N: I saw elsewhere that the song "Cosmetic Damages" is written from the perspective of a character. Is writing characters for songs something that you like to do a lot or is some of the material autobiographical?

Marko: Lately, I've been gravitating towards the fiction. Especially with this last EP I think I spent a lot more time on writing songs that have a big picture as opposed to throw-away lines that sound cool or are stream of consciousness . . . you can get away with shit by calling it that, but really you're taking your audience for granted and not giving them enough credit. When I put in more time and effort into writing a story, I can explain that song with somebody a lot faster and a lot clearer and with a lot more sincerity. That being said, I do like writing stories that I make up, and I also like taking a subject and commenting on it. I can add fictional lines or characters or semi-fictional characters as long as it works within that world.

N: So like you're experiencing something and then expanding upon it in a fictional way?

Marko: Yeah, when something is too hyperrealistic it's either too absurd or it's too mundane. And I like some mundane, but not too much.

N: Yeah, writing characters or just being willing to engage with making some things up when writing definitely lets you manipulate the space between absurd and mundane a bit. You're more in control I guess. So what is non-tour life like for Bike Thiefs? Did you have to quit your jobs to go on this tour? 

Andrew: Kris and I are really lucky to have awesome jobs. We both work at bars. I work at an arcade bar right downtown, and Kris works at a pool hall. We have great bosses.

Kris: They've been pretty supportive.

Marko: I'm also lucky [laughter] I do like an Uber Eats thing, so I make my own hours as a contractor. We get to kind of just disappear for a while. The people in our lives are really supportive, and we're really lucky to have that. Especially as people start seeing how much work you put into a band and music, they start to respect it . . . I think people can sense if you're just fucking off and like "I'm on tour," you know what I mean? No, you're just playing forty-five minutes away from home every weekend. Which there's nothing wrong with that . . .

N: You guys are past that point now. You're like what, probably two-thousand miles away from home, something like that?

Kris: Three.

Andrew: Three-thousand.

Marko: Yeah, we've driven just under four-thousand miles.

N: Where is next on tour?

Andrew: Baton Rouge. Going back west after that for three shows in Texas, then two shows in Oklahoma, Cincinnati, and Chicago, then home.

N: Awesome, good luck, thanks for talking to us.


Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BikeThiefs/
Bandcamp: https://bikethiefs.bandcamp.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2L7BMqZTuuDupOzN7afzr7

Book Review - Freegans: Diving Into the Wealth of Food Waste in America

Freegans: Diving Into the Wealth of Food Waste in America is an undergraduate sociology thesis turned ethnographic book in which the author Alex V. Barnard looks at the growing worldwide freegan movement. The book focuses primarily on freegan.info, a New York City freegan collective which the author was active in for several years. In general the freegan movement is a direct-action oriented movement of people who seek to obtain all types of goods and even services for free instead of purchasing them through capitalist channels; Freegans (the book) focuses primarily on food waste in New York City and freegan.info’s efforts to reclaim it.

Freeganism distinguishes itself from other anti-waste movements through freeganism’s opposition to purchasing goods and services. Freegans avoid purchasing goods as much as possible because freeganism is intended to be anticapitalism. In practice freeganism criticizes capitalism both verbally and materially by withholding potential revenue from the capitalist system, an act which freegan.info members often refer to as “dropping out of capitalism.”

Freegans differ from neoliberal anti-waste advocates. While neoliberals push for consumers to be more ethical and careful about their product choices, freegans assert that civilization's impending economic and ecological crises cannot be prevented by consumers switching to so-called ethical products like recycled paper goods, vegan food, and eco-cars. As such, freegans conclude that consumption-driven sustainability movements and consumer activism (buying the more-ethical “X” product instead of cheaper unethical product “Y”) regularly increase overall waste at retail outlets. For example, some freegan.info members argue that when a store begins to offer vegan-meat alternatives, the store does not stop selling meat or even sell less meat as a result. Instead, the store ends up throwing more meat and meat-alternatives into dumpsters (despite this, most freegan.info members still adhere to vegan diets). Freegan.info thus critiques consumer vegan activism and elucidates the capitalist and classist undertones that activists interject into much modern animal-rights discourse (these classist undertones are found even in anti-capitalist groups such as in official Food Not Bombs literature).

The phrase “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is often nihilistically whispered in today’s world in an effort to console ourselves about our inevitable unethical purchases. Is this mantra true? The freegan answer is “maybe.” Freegan.info members have found ways to provide for their basic needs without resorting to capitalist consumption, but they readily point out that the freegan lifestyle is largely dependent on capitalism and its scraps. Still, this way of life seems more ethical to them than directly supporting the system. By living off these scraps, they hope to disarm the powerful myth that capitalist markets are the most efficient way to distribute basic goods.

The book does try to characterize a variety of freegan practices such as squatting, bike repair using found parts, and sewing (patching old and found clothes instead of buying new), but these activities play a supporting role to dumpster diving, the book’s most lucid means of articulating freegan culture and practice. The author’s familiarity with dumpster diving allows him to concisely lay out freegan.info’s general rules and rituals for dumpster diving while also looking at issues that freegan.info has to navigate when redistributing dumpstered goods. These chapters are a valuable resources for anyone who is considering dumpster diving but wishes to do so with a prior knowledge of the practice. Barnard also uses his freegan research to draw broader implications about global food waste; mainly he clearly articulates the difference between neoliberal food-waste and anti-capitalist food-waste rhetoric (namely, neoliberalism tends to blame consumers for food-waste while anti-capitalist approaches to the subject tend to blame food retailers for waste first rather than consumer. The book and freeganism in general offer this closing key insight to contemporary waste discourse: food retailers are far more in control of the food supply chain than consumers are, a thought that if true entirely invalidates the neoliberal conception of the empowered consumer.

Interview: Jimmy and The Jimbos

Jimmy and The Jimbos is a twee-pop band from Gulf Breeze, Florida. On December 22nd the Jimbos released their debut EP titled "The Jimbo Ep(ic)." We chatted with the band leaders AJ Atkins and Ryan Post on their release show night outside of The Handlebar in Pensacola, FL.

*At the time of publication, Jimmy and the Jimbos has officially shortened their band name to "Jimbo." The name change was not official at the time of our interview, so for the sake of editing, the interview refers to them by their former name.*


N: First of all, congrats on the EP release. You two are sort of the band leaders and founders of Jimmy and the Jimbos, how did you meet each other and how long have you been working on the songs on your EP?

AJ: I’d say me and Ryan met a long long time ago? That Calvary Kids group?

Ryan: Yeah.

AJ: We met then, but then we became friends a couple years ago in high school. We started hanging out and have been making music together since 2014.

N: So like three and a half years or so?

Ryan: Yeah, around that. It’s been awhile.

N: And the Jimbos EP is the first of that music you’ve released?
AJ: I’ve never released anything. Ryan has released an album before. I wrote the songs on this EP and a couple songs we play live together. We’re writing our debut album together for what’s coming after the EP coming out today.

N: So are some of the songs on the EP ones you wrote like way way back?

AJ: Yeah. On Bandcamp we say one song on the EP was a demo we did with my older brother in 2014, it’s an oldie.

N: I understand there were some last minute setbacks with the recording process for this EP and the tracks were just finished this week right?

AJ: We finished today actually.

N: Finished on release day, okay -- Can you talk a little bit about that and the rushed process and how you think that affected the sound, for better or worse and anything you learned from having to put something together that quick?
AJ: Definitely something I learned . . . I learned all of Ableton [a recording software]. My brother was helping us record, but he got caught up with work stuff while we were recording. Next time I’d say we’re going to give ourselves more time to do it and to work on it longer so we can have things finished before the day it’s actually supposed to come out.

Ryan: The tracks definitely could’ve been cleaned up a lot more, but I feel like we kind of thrive on chaos so . . .

AJ: Everything came out how I wanted it to sound

Ryan: Yeah--

AJ: If we put more time into it, I don’t know if it would necessarily sound better.

N: About the band name, Jimmy and the Jimbos, how did it come about?
AJ: There’s some lore behind that one.

Ryan: Deep lore. Do we really know how Jimbo originated?

AJ: Jimmy was the original word. It was just something you’d shout when you’re losing in a video game or someone’s about to die in a movie. I don’t remember, I think it’s from Godzilla or something?

Ryan: But then we started slowly using it instead of words like dude or bro. It’d be like, “What’s up, Jimmy?” or “What’s up, Jimbo?”

AJ: Jim was the final incarnation. It kind of devolved.

N: Is it maybe a Jimmy Neutron thing? The dad in that cartoon says Jimbo a lot.

Ryan: I don’t even know. I think it was from some Star Wars offshoot--

N: There’s no Jimmys in Star Wars, I do know that.
AJ: Jimmy Solo, don’t you remember Jimmy Solo?

Ryan: Pretty much in high school our whole friend group started calling each other Jimbo. It spread throughout the highschool and was kind of known our group was the Jimbos.

The Jimbos at their Ep(ic) release night

N: On your social media you seem to have crafted a persona and some lingo, calling all your fans “Jim” and “Jimbo” and making use of a stylized syntax. What inspired this sort of character you play online? What do you feel that brings to the table?
Ryan: We were striving for the cult following.

AJ: A cult following definitely. Also, personally I don’t think it’s weird when we say Jim and Jimmy. We have all this lingo that sounds completely normal to me because I’ve been using it for so many years, but some people want to question why we say like epic or jimmy or jimbo. Calling my friends those names is no big deal.

N: I guess people don’t always think to carry their social lingo over into creative projects. It’s a type of branding perhaps.

AJ + Ryan: Yeah.

N: I’ll just keep feeding you answers ha. So the album art and the general aesthetic choices of Jimmy and the Jimbos have a youthful over-the-top collage feel that reminds me a lot of Nickelodean TV visuals. Is that something you kind of draw from or am I totally off the mark?
Ryan: We strive to be as . . .

AJ: As goofy as possible. Not taking ourselves too seriously. We actually have a lot of Spongebob influence in the guitars. Do you know the band Ween?

N: I do not.

[AJ sings a few bars for me off Ween’s Ocean Man for me]

AJ: The guitars in Spongebob are kind of jangly I’d say. Those chord progressions inspired us a bit.

N: Were there guitars in Spongebob? I haven’t watched the show in a very long time.
AJ: Yes. Go binge that and listen to the music and see if you can pick out some relations between us and that. It might just be me. The tone is similar, I think.

N: Regardless of what anyone thinks of Jimmy and the Jimbos’ music, I think everyone can appreciate the fact that you’ve managed to assemble one of the largest local bands in the area including multiple guitarists, orchestral strings, and woodwind instruments. That’s something most bands don’t get to do until they get serious studio money behind them. How many people are in your band and how did you go about finding all these members that play auxiliary instruments?

AJ: We have ten . . .

Ryan: Normally ten people in the band. I kind of searched them out and asked around on social media. Our flute player was just a friend of our bass player [Bridgette]. The flute player was originally Bridgette’s ride to practice and I found out she played flute and we got her to join the band. It’s a lot of searching online and also happenstance.

AJ: Also the core members of the band are a close-knit group of friends. We kind of have expanded from there.

N: Do you find that your social circle just has a lot of people that grew up playing instruments and you lucked out in that regard?

Ryan: Yes and no. We even had some people like our synth player Ian. He learned how to play synth just so he could join the band.

AJ: And Bridgette learned bass just to join too.

N: Okay, that’s cool you’re giving people the opportunity to play music who maybe haven’t traditionally grown up playing.

AJ: I feel like almost everyone that grew up in a middle-class family had parents that forced them to play an instrument.

N: Yeah, I played trombone. I’m still waiting on my ska-punk band to form.
Ryan: No, just join our band.

N: I’m so bad, you don’t want to hear that ha. So Jimmy and the Jimbos and other Pensacola bands like Feed Lemon and Lights With Fire have forged this new social unit of sorts in Pensacola that has brought a lot of new musicians and also new fans into the nightlife economy here. Do you think there’s any one or two unifying factors that is bringing these people out to shows? Like obviously people enjoy going out on the weekend and seeing bands, but is there anything in your mind that has caused all these new people to latch onto local shows as one of their regular social outlets?
AJ: We do a ridiculous amount of pushing on Facebook and stuff.

Ryan: When you have ten people in your band and they share it a couple times . . . it’s like 40 shares.

N: Exponential returns. For every additional member you add to the Jimbos, you get like ten additional people in the audience at your show.
Ryan: Exactly.

AJ: We should add like ten more people.

N: That’s like a scam almost, i guess I should add some more members to my band if I want to get paid more ha. Is that a hard thing to do managing that many people?
AJ: Oh, it’s impossible. We don’t even manage it well!

Ryan: Our practices don’t usually consist of everyone until the day of the show. We get together here and there to work on individual parts and bring it all together later.

N: Cool. any big plans for 2018?
Ryan: I think we’re just going somewhere out of town and lock ourselves in a hotel or a log cabin and just write a lot of music.

N: Is that actually what you’re going to do?

Ryan: That’s the plan.

N: Okay, I didn’t know if that was like some Bon Iver shitposting.

AJ: Ha, that’s us for sure.

Ryan: We’re looking to have our full-length album by 2018.

AJ: We’re working on the concepts right now. Oh, I thought of an answer to one of the earlier questions. You asked what we do with anything I learned from recording? I’d say we definitely worked out all the parts fast because before everyone kind of played whatever they wanted to play. When we went to record we figured out exact parts and tweaked things and refined it a lot.

N: Yeah, when you record you figure out this fun stuff you do on stage doesn’t always translate well to a recording that needs to flow. That’s a frustrating but interesting part about music. I wish we could figure out our parts before we had to go and record them, but for some reason it doesn’t work like that.
Ryan + AJ: Yeah, absolutely.

N: All right, cool. Well thanks for talking to me.

Ryan + AJ: Thank you.


You can stream download the band's debut EP here: https://jimmyandthejimbos.bandcamp.com/album/the-jimbo-ep-ic-demo-2

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JIMBO-161700907734755/

Interview with Graham Snuggs

Photo courtesy of Monique Adriane

Graham Snuggs, singer-songwriter from Tallahassee, FL, played a house show in Pensacola on October 7th. Before the show, Graham took some time to talk to me about his music, the Tallahassee scene, and the challenges of growing as a performer amidst the frenzy of other responsibilities that came along with his early twenties.

Nathan: If you could pick four words to sum up the themes you want your music to evoke for you and your fans, what would those words be?

Graham: I’d probably say, well, one, sadness. Two, introspection. Three, spirituality. And four, feelings.

Nathan: I think “feelings” encompasses your music pretty well. So introspection –– do you feel like you’re writing more for yourself or is it a combination of writing for both others and yourself to help make sense of experiences?

Graham: That’s interesting, I’ve thought a lot about that, especially in the last year. When I first started writing, it was solely to get out all the emotions I was always feeling. It was extremely cathartic to play shows, and then there was a significant shift in . . . I’d say earlier this year where I’d be playing shows and not really feeling much of anything. And so now I think I’m realizing that these songs are more for others as well as like for my personal thoughts and feelings, but they [the songs] are also for . . . I don’t know, I touch on a lot of things that people are scared to voice.

Nathan: And I’d add too that you’ve probably repeated some of those songs so much that they don’t resonate with you as much as they used to. You and I are friends on Facebook and I often see you share old, terrible (no offense) videos of you as a teenager futzing around with a guitar in your room and singing along for kicks. How many years have you been performing exactly and what role or purpose do you think performance serves in your life, both then and now?

Graham: I’ve been, like, publicly performing for . . . since high school. But seriously performing as a job for probably two years.

Nathan: How old are you now?

Graham: I’m twenty-two. Back then I think I was just . . . I thought I was good back then and I posted those videos because I wanted people to be like ‘oh, Graham is making progress,’ as you can tell. I mean, they’re not the worst thing, but when it’s just nine minutes of me playing a C and G-chord inverted and I’m just kind of screaming, it just kind of gets overwhelming *Laughs*

Nathan: Does performance, is it something you think you would miss a lot if you didn’t do it? Have you always been a performer to some extent?

Graham: Yeah, to some extent. Like, both my parents grew up doing chorus and musicals all throughout high school and in their respective church youth groups. And so I grew up, first I did sports, which is a type of performance, and then I started getting more into doing musicals and stuff. I did a lot of stuff at this youth camp called Mason’s School of Music, and we’d do like . . . put on a play in a week basically and it’d be a theme of like the Spongebob movie that came out nine years ago, so then when I started playing guitar at 10 or 11, um, I wanted to write lyrics as well. I was listening to a lot of scene bands, so I think performance to me is something so important and it’s like an outlet. I don’t think I could do without it.

Q. How long have you lived in Tallahassee for?

Graham: All my life.

Nathan: All twenty-two years?

Graham: All twenty-two. Well, I’ve had brief stints in Guatemala for three and a half months and in Costa Rica for three and a half months.

Nathan: And this is your first time in Pensacola. It seems like a lot of Tallahassee musicians have never played Pensacola and vice-versa even though the drive isn’t too far. Do you think this lack of exchange between our scenes is a self-imposed problem or is it logistically complicated for Tallahassee artists to play Pensacola because of the time change and such?

Graham: I think with a lot of the scenes, especially in Florida, but specifically Pensacola and Tallahassee, they’re both very similar. But I think with Tallahassee, it’s more, everyone’s kind of in their own respective scene, you know? So we have people from Gainesville, we have people from Orlando, all the way down to Miami and up, we have some people from Pensacola. But I think that’s the main factor, is that we don’t have a lot of people from Pensacola [in Tallahassee that are encouraging a connection with Pensacola]. I don’t think it’s an intentional thing. I don’t think we’re trying to pigeonhole Pensacola in their own place or put them in some spot, but I think like, I was driving here today and it took me like two and a half hours and I was like ‘this is so weird, like why don’t I play here more?’ I think also, on a different note, a lot of people don’t have connections out west. Even though Pensacola isn’t even nearly as west as, like, parts of the West but I think that’s also something people think about.

Nathan: That’s a common thing here too. People tour down into South Florida and it’s almost strange to see anybody go out west to Mississippi or Texas, something like that. Maybe it’s more competitive out there, I’m not sure. Anyways, I love your song “That’s What They Tell Me” from the American Dream EP. The track seems to criticize both the church and hardline acceptance of capitalist doctrine that is often an unlikely key part of church culture in the US. I grew up in churches like that, and this brand of Christianity seems to prioritize economic stability and material desires like Disney trips over living their religion. Can you talk a bit about the inspiration behind “That’s What They Tell Me”?

Graham: Yeah, um, it’s funny, I was in Costa Rica when I wrote that song, and I, uh I was listening to this band called the Collection, and they’re like an alt-indie spiritual band and I don’t know, I realized I was frustrated, I mean this was even before like the election, I mean now, it’s easy to be frustrated at politics and like modern day Christianity or what have you, but I don’t know, my time in Costa Rica, I thought a lot about how wrong it is that, you know, we just birth people to go to war. Or like we send people . . . I think a lot of what I don’t like is war. Um, I’m a pacifist, I have a tattoo about pacifism. Also, at that time I was reading this book called Jesus for President, and so it talked a lot about like, what we spend per year on our [the United State’s] military budget. It’s over 600 billion dollars, and like the marginalized people here in America, they aren’t getting a dime. And so I think a lot of the inspiration for the song was just that, and also, by definition I’d say I’m a Christian, but I think I’ve been very frustrated for the last two years towards it, because you know we kind of just either judge people or we lump people into this category that . . . the people that I think need to be reached the most, but instead we call them sinful and say they’re not worth anything to us, and so, I don’t know, I think it’s interesting when I have, uh, kind of this platform to play a song like that, which is you know, politically and spiritually charged. Um, cause I think it’s important we challenge the things that we were grown on.

Photo courtesy of Operation Artist

Nathan: That’s cool. Socially-conscious Christians is a rare thing in the South. So marginalized peoples, that area of study is a big part of your life. You’re a student at Florida State, I believe, and you’re studying social work, correct?

Graham: Yes sir.

Nathan: Nice, we’ll talk more about that later. You also seem to be a pretty big fan of Noah Gundersen. Your music is similar to his, similar dynamics, similar instrumentation, and some voice elements as well. Gundersen is an artist that . . . he had an initial career that was sustained by a bunch of really excellent EPs, um Gundersen kind of struggled to duplicate that feel, the feel of those EPs, a shorter release, when he started making full albums. You’re preparing to release, or record a full length record. What are some of the challenges that you face in translating your music from EPs, which you’ve also released mainly, to a full record?

Graham: Yeah, mhmm, I don’t know, I had a pretty big anxiety attack about it two weeks ago. Um, I think the one thing is with all the EPs, it’s just me and a guitar. There’s no click, there’s no . . . it was just me and my buddy Chandler like sitting in his room recordings with two mattresses as soundproofing or whatever. I think there’s actually one track where you can hear a plane flying over, and he’s like ‘Do you want to cut that out’ and I’m like, ‘nah, that’s cool.’ So I think the easy thing about that is that they’re just shotguns. You can shotgun that whole EP in like twenty-minutes, uh, maybe fifteen. So, I think the problem I’m facing with this full-length is that I’m putting way more time into it, it’s not just me for three hours just getting it done, it’s like sessions. I’ve been recording since . . . like uh . . . the last bit of August or so? Um, and all the songs I’m playing to a click, there’s gonna be drums, there’s going to be violin, um piano.

Nathan: So it’s a lot more ambitious overall.

Graham: Exactly. Cause, I mean, it’s funny because I take a lot from Gundersen, I take a lot from a lot of folky Americana artists, but one thing I do realize is that with my friends that are like singer-songwriters, EPs are usually the easiest thing to do. It’s not as much time and you’re at least getting a good five-song, four-song thing into people’s hands, and I think that’s what I wanted to do firsthand. I had a lot of songs and a lot of time just to like record them. I think the thing with the full length though, it’s going to take people more time to listen to it than you know . . . it’s going to be probably forty to forty-five minutes long at least, which is you know, almost double the length one of my EPs is. So, I think for me, it’s just I want people to keep interest from the first song to the last song. You know, that’s the challenges I’m facing with that.

Nathan: So, the two main parts of your life it sounds like are school for social work and music. How do those two parts connect to and inform each other, if at all? Is school sort of a necessary evil for you that gets in the way of music, or are your studies, career plans, and music more compatible with each other and inform each other more than it might appear on the surface?

Graham: Yeah, um, it’s weird. I hate school, a lot. I’ve taken lots of time off. I, um, I just got done taking a year off and now I’m starting my bachelor’s in social work. So, but I did, I just got engaged two weeks ago, so now even more so it’s kind of this push for me to have something else other than just like the coffee shop that I work at and the shows I’m playing, you know?

Nathan: Right.

Graham: And I want kind of a more adult job, and don’t get me wrong, I think I’ll still play shows and if anything happens from it, like I’ll just take off and do that. But I think, um, a lot of what I inform people on in my songs touch a lot on my major in social work. Social work is predominately about serving the marginalized people in America or just all over the world, um, and people that are struggling with anxiety and depression, or people who are impoverished, or orphans and what have you, and I think a lot of my songs kind of reach out to that population, like the marginalized, kind of ‘down-and-outs,’ quote unquote. So, but on the opposite end it’s like one is career-focused [social work] whereas the other is not career-focused at all [music]. I mean don’t get me wrong, I think it’d be awesome to pack out stadiums or pack out my favorite venues that I’ve been going to my whole life.

Nathan: But one’s a lot harder.

Graham: It’s a lot harder when, you know, it’s not the 90s, it’s not all heresay, like talking to each other about like what’s going on, it’s like, how good is your Facebook? How good is your Instagram? Do you have a Soundcloud? Are you on Bandcamp? Like, are you putting all your music on Spotify? You know, it’s all so many more different things, and like when a band like Nirvana, they just like were really awful for four years and then they just like, made it.

Nathan: And someone just found them.

Graham: Yeah.

Nathan: There’s definitely a lot more of a business side to music today, I think that’s grown exponentially. All right, well thanks for talking to me man.

Graham: For sure!

Graham's music is available for purchase on Bandcamp: 

https://grahamelliottsnuggs.bandcamp.com/

Review: Stage Four by Touché Amoré

"Touché Amoré has long been poised to be America’s preeminent post-hardcore band: they have memorable hooks, intellectual edge, and a formula that creates a canvas upon which they can tastefully address oft unspoken, pressing questions about grief."

On October 31st, 2014, the California post-hardcore outfit Touché Amoré was performing a mid-tour show at Fest, an annual Gainesville, Florida gathering of all things punk. That night, while frontman and lyricist Jeremy Bolm was performing on stage, Bolm’s mother Sandy passed away amidst her long battle with cancer. Bolm’s mother’s death inspired the songs and the title of Stage Four, the band’s fourth full-length record. Stage Four is somewhat of a concept record, but it is a concept record with a purpose rather than a concept record simply for the hell of making something avant-garde. The result is the band’s most accessible record yet; to call it pop-hardcore would be a mistake, but, unlike many other hardcore records, the lyrics of Stage Four are just as compelling as the music that drives them.

Stage Four’s heavy, existential themes are nothing new for Touché. 2011’s Parting the Sea . . . and 2013’s Is Survived By are both growling meditations on mortality and legacy in what the band sees as a largely post-religious age. The need to cope with his mother’s death appears to have challenged Jeremy Bolm with the task of applying the abstract philosophy detailed on the past records to a very real, difficult situation. Stage Four largely succeeds as both a stand-alone record and a step forward for the band: it draws from Touché’s past lyrical themes, matches those themes up with new scenarios, and then captures on tape what’s left when the theoretical meets the concrete.

Touché Amoré performing songs from Stage Four live for the first time ever on a Sunday evening in Mobile, Alabama.

Stage Four’s attention to minute lyrical detail sets this record apart from past Touché records and the band’s contemporaries. Here, Jeremy Bolm’s anecdotal imagery-based lyrics have more in common than ever with the lyrical styles of contemporary pop-punk bands like Modern Baseball and The Front Bottoms as well as other post-hardcore outfits such as La Dispute. Not that Touché even comes close to plagiarizing these other bands; Bolm’s lyrics and the lyrics of many other modern bands simply continue to express more and more a preference for the concrete poetic over the cryptic poetic. Bolm’s standout lines include references to a broken set of his mother’s coffee mugs on “Water Damage,” the final voicemail from his mother on “Eight Seconds,” and in “Displacement,” a coping method for his mother’s death that uses his own beliefs rather than those of his mother. The rest of the band backs up these narratives with explosive instrumentation and a gravitas of their own that their contemporaries would be hard-pressed to match. It is doubtful that the life and death themes on the record would sound more at home in any other context than backed by Stage Four’s loud, weaponized soundscapes. Occasionally, the record’s sound does depart from the band’s hardcore roots, and when it does so, the band seems to be seeking to create dramatic effect using new means, rather than seeking to water down their sound in order to make themselves more accessible. Sometimes these forays into other genres succeed, but other times they backfire.

When the record’s first single “Palm Dreams” dropped earlier this year in June, it included a big surprise: on “Palm Dreams” Bolm leaves his screams behind, and, for the first time ever, actually sings in a rich, melodic baritone. What the frontman accomplishes by both singing and screaming is very reminiscent of obsolete screamo styles that featured screaming vocalists alongside melodic “soft singers.” It’s quite possible that Stage Four’s use of the scream/sing dynamic will lead to a resurgence of this style among likeminded bands.

Despite the ambition of Bolm’s singing, these singing sections often unfortunately happen to fall within some of the record’s more lackluster tracks. The record’s final two tracks, “Water Damage” and “Skyscraper” (featuring 2016’s phenomenal breakout singer/songwriter, Julien Baker, on guest vocals) are both composed of two-part movements: in the first movement, Bolm sings over a soft section of droning shoegaze (à la recent Title Fight or Turnover) and follows up with a launch into screams and heavier instrumentation from the band. Even as a setup for these satisfying, anthemic builds, the softer openings find Touché exposed and out of their element almost entirely. The rhymes of “Skyscraper,” while compelling when screamed, are unfortunately trite when sung, and “Water Damage” could begin at its crescendo and cut out its soft opening section without sacrificing any of the integrity of the track. I give my props to the band for trying something new; it was an ambitious choice, but the result is not always up to par with the physicality and musicianship of the album’s better tracks.

Touché Amoré has long been poised to be America’s preeminent post-hardcore band: they have memorable hooks, intellectual edge, and a formula that creates a canvas upon which they can tastefully address oft unspoken, pressing questions about grief. Despite a few underwhelming moments, Stage Four is a nearly-perfect record. Touché Amoré chose to take risks on this album, and more often than not, those risks pay off. The album is well-worth a listen.

Review: "Hypnosis for Sleep" by Keep

            On its first release, Hypnosis for Sleep, the band Keep blends post-hardcore and shoegaze into thick, swirling tracks that simultaneously balance heaviness and ambiance. The group hails from Virginia, and notably contains Danny Dempsey of the excellent rising Virginia pop-punk outfit Turnover.

            Keep uses a dense, droning rhythm section to create a compelling sonic texture that falls somewhere in between Slowdive and Balance And Composure. The E-bow, an instrument that vibrates guitar strings using electromagnetic waves, can be heard throughout the EP, and so can melancholy lead guitar lines full of lazy hammer-ons and slides reminiscent of the early Smashing Pumpkins. Drifting lyrics are delivered by two different vocalists, and often in layered, two-part harmony.  Unlike many contemporaries who aim for a heavy yet ambient sound, Keep manages to strike a delicate balance between a static wall of sound and melodic clarity. Even when the music gets thick and muddy, the vocals and lead guitar never get bogged down in the mud.

            Hypnosis for Sleep is a very short EP. Its three tracks clock in at just under ten minutes, but it’s a very consistent and enjoyable ten minutes. This is definitely a group that fans of shoegaze and post-hardcore alike will want to keep a close eye on.

Score: 4/4

Hypnosis for Sleep is available on Keep's Bandcamp for $3.