This is a list of all the albums, EPs, demos, singles, etc. that I listened to in their entirety during the month of April 2014. Afterwards is a list of the movies/zines/live performances I consumed as well and my notes regarding each.
MUSIC:
4/1/14
Violent Vickie - "Monster Alley"
Silver Shadows - S/T EP
4/2/14
Healers - S/T EP
Nocando - "Tits 'n Explosions" mixtape
Splintered Hands - "Datura" EP
Lilith - "Bloom" EP
Planet Vegeta - "Live From Planet Vegeta" EP
4/7/14
Funeral Oration - "Discography" Disc 1
4/8/14
Funeral Oration - "Discography" Disc 2
4/9/14
Bobby Meader Music - "My Coffee's All Cold"
Bogtrotters Union - "Call It What You Will" EP
Aeternum - "A Shrine To Abomination"
Harassor - "Hater of Man"
SodaPop - "Proust Love" digital single
DZA - "DZA Dog: Beattape Vol. 1"
Amigo The Devil - "Diggers" EP
4/10/14
Danger Inc. - S/T
Sterile Jets - "Barlights at 2am"
Restaurnaut - "FAHF2" EP
Thee Rain Cats - S/T EP
Fever The Ghost - "Crab in Honey" EP
4/11/14
1980sprince - "Modern Philosophy" EP
The Whiskey Circle - S/T
northamericans - "Increasing" EP
4/12/14
Funeral Oration - S/T
Lucky Dragons - "Widows"
Chrome Drones - "Demos: Pneumatic Life"
Lost City Angels - S/T
SiLM - "Listen Within"
The Chiefs - "Holly-West Crisis"
Half Shadow - "Wind Water Passion Daughter"
The Llamadors - "Broken String" digital single
The Naked Time - "Ferociously Adorable"
4/13/14
V/A - "Survival of the Fattest" Fat Wreck Chords promo compilation
4/14/14
Apex Realm - "Surf the Purpose" EP
end of the summer - "Three" EP/demo
Noa James - "The Orca" digital single
Stevie Crooks - "Cashmere Killer" mixtape
4/18/14
Fist Benders - "Quare Cunamor" EP
Ocean Man - "Something Worth Living For" EP
Kithkin - "Altered Beast" digital single
Foxfield - "Live at The Wire"
Braineater - S/T Demo
4/19/14
Fucking Invincible - "Very Negative" EP
Loma Prieta -"Last City"
Ghostlimb - "Confluence"
Moxiebeat - S/T EP
Left Astray - "Confines" EP
Bad Religion - "Suffer"
4/20/14
Parents - "Boxes of Armageddon" digital single
Fever Dream - "This Waste" digital single
3FT - "Set Sail" EP
Moonpool - "New Moon" demo
Andrew WK - "I Get Wet"
Ground Up - March 2008 demo
Bad Brains - "Rock For Light"
FF - S/T EP
Derek Rogers - "This House is a Block"
4/22/14
The B-52s - "Cosmic Thing"
Death - "...For The Whole World To See"
House Of Low Culture - "Submarine Immersion Techniques Vol. 1"
Cut Hands - "Madwoman" digital single
Godflesh - "Streetcleaner"
Trapped Within Burning Machinery/Pigeonwing - split EP
Cloud Rat - "Blind River"
4/23/14
Thou - "Heathen"
NASA Space Universe - "Yolanda's Rule" digital single
Cerebral Ballzy - "You're Idle" EP
OFF! - "Wasted Years"
Percee P + Miles Bonny - S/T digital single
starRo - "Look What You've Done To Me" digital single
Toy Light - "Afterlife"
DerBeats - "The One Who Knocks"
4/24/14
My Son The Birdman - "The Bamboo Bamboo" EP
Castle Pines - "Bless This House" EP
Damaged - "Disorder"
Emily Lacy - "Weatherbeaten Soul: Practice Sessions" EP
Nicole Kidman - "Aching/Nothing" EP
Stellaluna - "And The Mango Tree" EP
Whitman - "Dust Unsettled: Ten Years of Whitman"
end of the summer - "Three" EP/demo
Tool - "AEnima"
4/25/14
Trapdoor Social - "Death of a Friend" EP
Santoros - "Ancestros"
Whiskey Shivers - "Rampa Head"
The California Honeydrops - "People Get Ready" digital single
Old Rivals - S/T EP
Holly & The Italians - "The Right To Be Italian"
Heavy Justice - "Apocalyze"
4/26/14
The Battleship Agenda - "Sound the Sirens" EP
Cuddle Weather - "We Attract Computer Programmers" live demo single
Dictator - S/T EP
Haruka - "Far Away" EP
The Bloodhounds - "Hey Lonnie" digital single
Kevin Greenspon/Former Selves - "Betrayed By The Angels"/"Apropos of Golden Dreams" split LP
4/27/14
Tori Amos - "Scarlet's Walk"
4/28/14
Divided Heaven - "A Rival City"
Green Day - "American Idiot"
4/29/14
Terminal A/Sashcloth & Axes - split 7"
Mormon Crosses - 2014 Tour Demos
Rod Stewart - "Out of Order"
V/A - "Punk's Dead And It's Your Fault: An International Compilation" Bonus CD - 'covers'
4/30/14
Rat Path - "Mean Streets" EP
Colombian Necktie/Ruined Tongue - split 7"
He Whose Ox Is Gored - "Nightshade" EP
Headway - "Uproot" EP
Survay Says! - "Observations on the Human Condition"
Bleeding Rainbow - "Interrupt"
MUSIC NOTES:
- New Nocando mixtape is firrrrrre
- Favorite "new finds" of the month: Lilith, Aeternum, 1980sprince, SiLM, Apex Realm, Stevie Crooks, Moonpool, FF, Derek Rogers, House Of Low Culture, Godflesh, Thou, Percee P, Miles Bonny, Dictator, Former Selves, Mormon Crosses, Rat Path, Bleeding Rainbow
- I know I've listened to that Bobby Meader Music album before but I enjoyed it alot more this second time around...Very relate-able lyrics
- Danger Inc. and Heavy Justic are both awful, awful band names
- I've had either a Lagwagon song or a No Use For A Name song from that Fat Wreck compilation stuck in my head for like 3 weeks now
- I finally made a bandcamp page for end of the summer and posted my most recent EP/demo that KP recorded, "Three": check it out endofthesummer.bandcamp.com
- Worst of the month: Foxfield (trying too hard), Damaged (painfully generic)
- Finally got around to checking out that 1970s Death band; pretty cool stuff
- Holy shit House Of Low Culture is sooooo heavy and dense and the music actually sounds like its album title...dark submergence
- Believe it or not that was the very first time I ever listened to Godflesh, despite it being like the exact type of 'industrial' music that I love and despite their relative popularity; how did I miss out on this for so long?
- Same thing with Thou, how did I never hear them at all before this month? So well put together, so deep...so much
- I love NSU, don't get me wrong, but "Yolanda's Rule" is a pretty goddamn pointless song
- Check out Dictator from SD if you see they're playing a show; one of my new favorite locals
- Kevin Greenspon's music never fails to hit my heart
- That was my first time ever listening to Tori Amos and it was exactly like what I expected
- Every time I've heard Terminal A being on a show it's with Sashcloth & Axes so I guess its appropriate that they did a split together...I'm not too big on either one of them however so whatever
- Mormon Crosses RIYL The Coltranes, Culture Abuse, Weed, etc
- Rod Stewart sucks
- The new He Whose Ox Is Gored is what's up
- Survay Says! kicks ass and the new album is a good display of that
- That Bleeding Rainbow album very well be my favorite album by an artist I didn't know of from all of last month. Solid stuff.
LIVE PERFORMANCES:
4/3/14 - Apathean/Lilith @ The Dial
4/5/14 - Select Sex/(The Gravitys) @ The Dial
4/11/14 - ILL COM/Liquid/Tomber Lever/Happy In Hemet/Modern Traditions @ The Dial
4/19/14 - Loma Prieta/Fucking Invincible/Ghostlimb/Left Astray/Moxiebeat @ Bridgetown DIY
4/21/14 - Crisis Arm/FF/(The Gravitys)/Happy In Hemet/Moonpool @ The Dial
4/26/14 - Dictator/Ocean Man/Cuddle Weather/Obsolete Sun/(end of the summer) @ Temecula house show
4/27/14 - (end of the summer)/Restaurnaut/M A T H/File Island/Nicole Kidman/Stay Cool Forever @ Manny's apartment at UCR
LIVE NOTES:
- I'm gonna miss Apathean. Anybody who missed them perform on this first go-round really missed out. I'm hoping they come back sooner than later.
- We were supposed to open up that show on the 5th but I woke up from my nap later than I meant to and everybody was all pissed at me and then we fucked up like half of our set too, it wasn't good
- Modern Traditions is a very good new local band and you should check them out
- The show we played on the 21st was alot better than our show on the 5th but my amp was all screwy; coulda been better but at least we finally debuted some of our new songs
- JJ did abstract noise shit using his car as the instrument at that house show; It was odd but very unique and cool
- I was somehow the least drunk person at that apartment show and I played last
MOVIES:
4/6/14 - "Wedding Crashers"
4/20/14 - "Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles"
MOVIE NOTES:
- "Usually, people who say they 'got thrown under the bus', say it a lot."
ZINES:
4/19/14 - "Cardio Arts: Incidents and Prophecies - Feb. 2014"
Monday, May 5, 2014
Friday, May 2, 2014
EXPERIENCE REVIEW: Enrollment In The Riverside County Work Release Program
This tale begins in late November 2012:
As part of my sentencing I was given 21 days of work release. If all had gone to plan those days would have been finished by the following April but due to my constant fuckery I ended up having to re-enroll several times, thus prolonging an already wearisome element of my penalty throughout nearly all of 2013.
My first go-round I forgot to bring my contract to the first day of service, which is grounds for termination. Then when I went to get re-enrolled I gave the cop lady an expired ID card so I had to go to the DMV and wait 6 to 8 weeks for the replacement to arrive. By the time I actually began my work days it was basically the time of year I originally should have been finishing up.
The first work site I was placed at was Southwest Detention Center, sorting and folding prisoner laundry for a day a week from April through July. It was tedious and occasionally gross but not as bad as serving real time. Nearly everybody in the program at some point or another also justifies things by saying "hey at least we're not picking up trash off the side of the road!" although I don't really understand how that would be objectively worse than handling used prison clothes.
My final day at that site was the 4th of July, which was an odd exercise in patriotic irony: unpaid prison labor says a lot about what America stands for after all.The supervisor cops were barbecuing on the loading dock and clearly wanted to get out of there as well because we were unprecedentedly allowed to leave early that day, around noon. One of the other guys I was working with was a weed dealer so we went and smoked a few bowls at the Carl's Jr. nearby Southwest after we got out.
The next week I woke up late and as soon as I saw the clock I realized that I was gonna be marked absent, and an absence equals a termination. Back to the enrollment lobby it was.
The next site I got assigned to was the Murrieta Police Department, where the 'labor' was even easier than the laundry I had been doing at the jail. Basically they tasked myself and another dude to wash 6 cop cars in 8 hours; even if I had been alone and working as lazily as I possibly could, that amount of work in that amount of time necessitated a large amount of downtime. During our many extended breaks I read the entire "Feral Faun" collection zine, which in its way also held a strange social irony much like Independence Day at the jail did: I would assume that most progressive anarchist manifestos were not written with the intention of them being read inside a police station in-between car washes.
Unfortunately I (once again) woke up late just the very next week so after only one day at the cop carwash I was (once again) terminated from the work release program. By then I only had 3 or 4 more days left to complete, I just wanted to get it over with, so I went back to the jailhouse the next day to (once again) put myself back in the system.
The building that houses the WRP processing office is the same one that non-criminal people go to when they want to visit their incarcerated family members or to put money on their books. I addressed the plexiglass-guarded officer at the front desk and he told me to sign the clipboard and take a seat, which I did. Across from where I sat was a woman who kept a fixed stare at the wall above my head and a lawyer who somehow looked like a priest. A younger cop from the back called out my name and I came to his office to give him my ID and enrollment sheet. He told me to go sit back down while he processed me.
When I went back out to the lobby, the priest-lawyer was at the glass-window-desk asking to put $20 on his client's books and saying he would greatly like to discuss their case as soon as possible.The cop looked the inmate up in their database and said something to the effect of "something is going on in his pod. It might be awhile." In my head I imagined a fight over Ramen. The inmate's representative went back to his seat.
Presumably having overheard that exchange just as I had, the woman with the fixed stare stood up and went to the desk. "I've been waiting here for over an hour!" to which the officer replied, "It's a process." She sighed heavily, tensely ran her hand through her hair from her forehead back, and walked outside.
The work release officer came back out to the lobby.
"Ian?"
I stood up and went with him again to sign the conditions of my new program. This time they had assigned me to the Lake Skinner location, which I had heard from other ne'erdowells in the WRP shuffle was the easiest of all locations. A few people told me I could probably even blaze there while "serving my time" because the supervisors are so lax.
My visit had taken less than 10 minutes.With my new contract in hand I passed by all the nervously waiting people in the lobby, past all the innocents being reprimanded by administrative officers for asking questions.
I sat on the bench outside of the jailhouse and called for a ride home. While I was waiting, I noticed the woman with the fixed stare pacing back and forth a few meters ahead, near the palm trees that decorate the Riverside Superior Court's exterior. Her arms were firmly crossed and her stare was still fixed, only downwards now.
Maybe 2 minutes after I sat down, a mother with 2 small children swiftly pushed the lobby door open and stormed out. Without stopping as she passed, she told the pacing woman, "we've been here for 4 hours. They said something's going on ''in the pods,' I don't know what's going on, but we won't get to see them today." Her voice was a mixture of frustration, disappointment, and sad disbelief. Other people who had been in there began walking out behind the mother, each carrying similar countenances, presumably having spent the majority of their day in that unaccomodating brick-and-plexiglass waiting chamber only to be sternly told that it was all for naught and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
The pacing woman continued her measure after everyone had passed her by, her arms still crossed and her gaze still downward. Every now and again she would kick the bulbs that fall onto the concrete from the palm trees, each kick delivered with less and less vigor. She didn't want to believe what the mother had told her. Eventually she did turn towards the parking lot and walked back to her car, still staring down. Before she opened the door she stopped to take off her glasses and wipe her eyes.
I was the only person remaining outside the jail lobby at this point, until a minivan parked and a clearly-frazzled woman unloaded several small children, herding them towards the building. It was an obvious ordeal for her to corral them, these children who will not understand why they still can't see their brother or father or whoever it is that they never get to see, even now that they're here where he is.
A part of me wanted to tell her before she made it all the way to the door that the effort was useless, that she wouldn't get to see her loved ones today because they were busy making further problems for themselves here in their place of punishment; but then I realized, who am I to tell her that?
I'm barely beyond the bars myself, I'm just some derelict of unknown offense, a criminal sitting shiftily outside the entrance to the jail.
I came here and was dealt with immediately because I am amongst the guilty. Who am I to tell her that she came here for no reason, that she wasted her and her children's time and hope; that there is no function or utility the authorities within that building can possibly provide to a well-wishing non-offender at the present time?
That's for the cops to tell her.
She shuffled her family into the lobby and soon after my ride pulled up to the curb.
"I can't wait until you're done with all this crap, son," Dad said to me while keeping a fixed stare over the steering wheel. "I really hate being here."
As part of my sentencing I was given 21 days of work release. If all had gone to plan those days would have been finished by the following April but due to my constant fuckery I ended up having to re-enroll several times, thus prolonging an already wearisome element of my penalty throughout nearly all of 2013.
My first go-round I forgot to bring my contract to the first day of service, which is grounds for termination. Then when I went to get re-enrolled I gave the cop lady an expired ID card so I had to go to the DMV and wait 6 to 8 weeks for the replacement to arrive. By the time I actually began my work days it was basically the time of year I originally should have been finishing up.
The first work site I was placed at was Southwest Detention Center, sorting and folding prisoner laundry for a day a week from April through July. It was tedious and occasionally gross but not as bad as serving real time. Nearly everybody in the program at some point or another also justifies things by saying "hey at least we're not picking up trash off the side of the road!" although I don't really understand how that would be objectively worse than handling used prison clothes.
My final day at that site was the 4th of July, which was an odd exercise in patriotic irony: unpaid prison labor says a lot about what America stands for after all.The supervisor cops were barbecuing on the loading dock and clearly wanted to get out of there as well because we were unprecedentedly allowed to leave early that day, around noon. One of the other guys I was working with was a weed dealer so we went and smoked a few bowls at the Carl's Jr. nearby Southwest after we got out.
The next week I woke up late and as soon as I saw the clock I realized that I was gonna be marked absent, and an absence equals a termination. Back to the enrollment lobby it was.
The next site I got assigned to was the Murrieta Police Department, where the 'labor' was even easier than the laundry I had been doing at the jail. Basically they tasked myself and another dude to wash 6 cop cars in 8 hours; even if I had been alone and working as lazily as I possibly could, that amount of work in that amount of time necessitated a large amount of downtime. During our many extended breaks I read the entire "Feral Faun" collection zine, which in its way also held a strange social irony much like Independence Day at the jail did: I would assume that most progressive anarchist manifestos were not written with the intention of them being read inside a police station in-between car washes.
Unfortunately I (once again) woke up late just the very next week so after only one day at the cop carwash I was (once again) terminated from the work release program. By then I only had 3 or 4 more days left to complete, I just wanted to get it over with, so I went back to the jailhouse the next day to (once again) put myself back in the system.
The building that houses the WRP processing office is the same one that non-criminal people go to when they want to visit their incarcerated family members or to put money on their books. I addressed the plexiglass-guarded officer at the front desk and he told me to sign the clipboard and take a seat, which I did. Across from where I sat was a woman who kept a fixed stare at the wall above my head and a lawyer who somehow looked like a priest. A younger cop from the back called out my name and I came to his office to give him my ID and enrollment sheet. He told me to go sit back down while he processed me.
When I went back out to the lobby, the priest-lawyer was at the glass-window-desk asking to put $20 on his client's books and saying he would greatly like to discuss their case as soon as possible.The cop looked the inmate up in their database and said something to the effect of "something is going on in his pod. It might be awhile." In my head I imagined a fight over Ramen. The inmate's representative went back to his seat.
Presumably having overheard that exchange just as I had, the woman with the fixed stare stood up and went to the desk. "I've been waiting here for over an hour!" to which the officer replied, "It's a process." She sighed heavily, tensely ran her hand through her hair from her forehead back, and walked outside.
The work release officer came back out to the lobby.
"Ian?"
I stood up and went with him again to sign the conditions of my new program. This time they had assigned me to the Lake Skinner location, which I had heard from other ne'erdowells in the WRP shuffle was the easiest of all locations. A few people told me I could probably even blaze there while "serving my time" because the supervisors are so lax.
My visit had taken less than 10 minutes.With my new contract in hand I passed by all the nervously waiting people in the lobby, past all the innocents being reprimanded by administrative officers for asking questions.
I sat on the bench outside of the jailhouse and called for a ride home. While I was waiting, I noticed the woman with the fixed stare pacing back and forth a few meters ahead, near the palm trees that decorate the Riverside Superior Court's exterior. Her arms were firmly crossed and her stare was still fixed, only downwards now.
Maybe 2 minutes after I sat down, a mother with 2 small children swiftly pushed the lobby door open and stormed out. Without stopping as she passed, she told the pacing woman, "we've been here for 4 hours. They said something's going on ''in the pods,' I don't know what's going on, but we won't get to see them today." Her voice was a mixture of frustration, disappointment, and sad disbelief. Other people who had been in there began walking out behind the mother, each carrying similar countenances, presumably having spent the majority of their day in that unaccomodating brick-and-plexiglass waiting chamber only to be sternly told that it was all for naught and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
The pacing woman continued her measure after everyone had passed her by, her arms still crossed and her gaze still downward. Every now and again she would kick the bulbs that fall onto the concrete from the palm trees, each kick delivered with less and less vigor. She didn't want to believe what the mother had told her. Eventually she did turn towards the parking lot and walked back to her car, still staring down. Before she opened the door she stopped to take off her glasses and wipe her eyes.
I was the only person remaining outside the jail lobby at this point, until a minivan parked and a clearly-frazzled woman unloaded several small children, herding them towards the building. It was an obvious ordeal for her to corral them, these children who will not understand why they still can't see their brother or father or whoever it is that they never get to see, even now that they're here where he is.
A part of me wanted to tell her before she made it all the way to the door that the effort was useless, that she wouldn't get to see her loved ones today because they were busy making further problems for themselves here in their place of punishment; but then I realized, who am I to tell her that?
I'm barely beyond the bars myself, I'm just some derelict of unknown offense, a criminal sitting shiftily outside the entrance to the jail.
I came here and was dealt with immediately because I am amongst the guilty. Who am I to tell her that she came here for no reason, that she wasted her and her children's time and hope; that there is no function or utility the authorities within that building can possibly provide to a well-wishing non-offender at the present time?
That's for the cops to tell her.
She shuffled her family into the lobby and soon after my ride pulled up to the curb.
"I can't wait until you're done with all this crap, son," Dad said to me while keeping a fixed stare over the steering wheel. "I really hate being here."
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