I, also, would like to thank the, uh, Ratboys for their music.
Boy, this sure was a crazy week that exposed how badly our systems are failing us and how fractured we are as a society. So I thought I’d start today’s newsletter with the most pressing issue of all… petty gripes about internet blogs!
I saw someone joking on Twitter last month that they were going to invoice Buzzfeed for including one of their tweets on a list of “23 Jokes About Being in Your Thirties Older Millennials Will Feel in Their (Aching) Bones.” Ehhh I’m conflicted on this. As someone who throws one surefire $million-dollar idea$ after another into the internet for no payment whatsoever, I 100% sympathize with the frustration. But at the same time, I feel like Buzzfeed is at least doing some minor semblance of work by curating a list of tweets for their readers who aren’t scrolling through Twitter at all hours of the day. And once it goes on a public forum like Twitter, they’re pretty much free to do that. But there’s a difference between that and what happened to me this week when both Paste and The AV Club took my Extremely Popular thread of videos of Bernie Thanking Bands For Their Music and just slapped it on their websites. No work. Just basically copy and pasting. Yes yes, I fully realize I am pretty much saying that it’s only wrong when it happens to me. But! I maintain that there’s a difference between curating the internet and taking curation someone else has already done and shoving some Petco ads into it. I guess I’m burning a bridge here, but Paste pays reputably abysmally, so fuck it.
Alright alright, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let me try to take the high road and expand the stories of the bands listed in my ever growing Bernie thread. Howsabout we start with Ratboys, yeah?
Ratboys have a new album called Printer’s Devil that’s been racking up a lot of well deserved praise lately, not only because it’s a sharp chunk of well produced indie rock but also because it subconsciously triggers people’s deeply held belief that printers are the devil. (A big Fuck You to my Epson XP6100! What does “Cloud Service Error” even mean?? I don’t use the cloud! Eat shit!) Plus, Ratboys’ recent performance at a Bernie Sanders rally went sort of viral because I guess people liked the way Bernie pronounced “Ratboys.”
The gig seemed like a cool experience and I wonder how they feel about getting memed. Actually wait what am I saying? I’m a Big-Time Music Journalist and I can call bands when I want to talk to them so why don’t I just get frontwoman Julia Steiner on the phone and say hi Julia, how are you today?
Julia Steiner: Doing swell. I drank a coffee today—out of the ordinary for me. I’m feeling some type of way.
Can you tell me how the opportunity to play a Bernie rally comes about?
It’s kind of a credit to the small world of DIY and punk. There’s a guy in Bernie’s campaign who is in the band Lemuria. His name is Max and he was doing a lot of Bernie’s programming. Back in November, he had invited Pet Symmetry to play a rally in Coralville, Iowa, I think. Marcus, who is their drummer and also our drummer, just mentioned offhand that he was in another band that would love to play. So Max hit us up five days or so before the rally. It was very short notice and awesome. He asked us to do a full band thing but our bassist Sean is actually a political reporter on the side.
For People, right?
Yeah. So, playing a political rally, no matter who he roots for, is a no-no. So, we played as a duo to not put him in an awkward position. It was pretty straightforward from there.
What was that day like?
We woke up early and drove to the Quad Cities, which is this area right on the border of Iowa and Illinois. So it’s kind of the closest it got to us.
And you’re based where?
We’re in Chicago. So, it was like a three-hour drive. It was really snowy. It was at a college and we pulled up, and from there it was surprisingly typical of any show. We loaded in, and the rally was in a ballroom in the student union building. There were like six people on the ground working for Bernie’s campaign. They were all super, and they were all our age—late 20s, early 30s. There were volunteers who showed up, but the main core team felt very relatable. It was cool to see a big-time campaign staffed by young people. We soundchecked, waited around for a few hours in a conference room, and then played our songs. Everyone in the crowd was sitting down. It was intimate and kind of strange. We got off, and then there were a few speakers, and Senator Sanders, who spoke for like an hour.
And started by famously thanking the Ratboys for their music.
Oh my god, that was so awesome. He had done that with Pet Symmetry, so I was optimistic that he might say that for us, but not banking on it.
You kind of became something of a meme after Bernie thanked you for your music. How do you feel about that?
It was awesome. I tried to get a video of that on my Instagram story and my phone kind of glitched out, so I wasn’t able to actually capture it. I kind of resigned to give up on it. But our friend Chris was able to capture it and post it on Twitter. When we were driving home that night, I wasn’t looking at my phone, but pulled over to get gas and had a ton of text messages from people asking if it was real.
All my friends are now quoting it and saying that they’d like to thank the Ratboys for their music. Are you hearing it in your personal life?
Yeah, it’s in a lot of the mentions on Twitter since our new music has come out. It’s an awesome soundbite and the way that he said it is so funny. I hope that it lives on.
It seems like things are going really well with the new album. I saw you got that nice Pitchfork review. But I have to ask, how does it feel to promote something at a time when it feels like the world is otherwise on fire?
Yeah, I mean, that’s something I think about every day. It’s hard because it’s our job to, at least in good faith, spread the word about what we’re doing. But you have to put that into perspective and realize that with the very simple phrase “go vote,” the reason we’re saying that is because people’s lives are literally at stake. We can’t afford to wait and see who wins the nomination and then vote blue no matter who. The reason that Dave and I are advocating for this is because people are literally dying, and we need health insurance, and we need student loan debt forgiveness, and a concerted government focus on climate change. Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, our music pales in comparison to saving our planet and revolutionizing our country, but at the same time, I get in this closed loop on Twitter sometimes where I start scrolling and I become deeply dejected and depressed about the state of things. So it’s important for me to find an out from that, whether that be music or going on a walk or some way to remove my brain from the cesspool of Twitter. So I think it’s nice to give people something to latch onto that’s a little more positive or more carefree. There’s always gonna be value in that. And at the end of the day, we made something that we care about a lot, and I feel like it would be a disservice to ourselves to not try to tell people about it.
What artist, past or present, would you want to hear Bernie thank for their music?
That’s such a good question. I’m trying to think of whether it should be a funny band name or an artist I’d love to hear Bernie be associated with.
Yeah, I think the trick is finding the balance between those two.
Probably Mannequin Pussy. I think that’d be a good combo of a badass band and a name that would confuse most people.
That’s a good one. I’m torn between Napalm Death and Pig Destroyer.
Yes! Oh, and my other answer would be The Suicide Machines.
So there you have it. Check out Ratboys and Printer’s Devil, which is out now. I really love the way Julia’s voice sounds on it. Speaking of, she also sang on a cover of The Ramones’ “Pet Sematary” with the aforementioned Pet Symmetry and I probably listen to it anywhere between 3 and 4,500 times a week. And while we’re on the subject of “Pet Sematary,” my friend Brenna wrote a lengthy oral history of the song last year. As someone who has gone through great lengths to track down people about the most trivial pop culture minutiae (I once wrote 5k words about a single hour of television), even I thought Brenna’s article was excessive.
Like a lot of people, I related to what Julia was saying about Twitter being a cesspool that feeds you depression-laced dopamine. I’ve been giving myself week-long internet breaks, during which I am able to focus with more clarity, I have meaningful interactions with friends, and I get a ton of work done. But then Mayor Pete will peddle some disingenuous clownass garbage and I’ll be like ohhh hell nawww and log on to Twitter with live grenades strapped to me. And then before I know it, I’ve lost an entire week to that godforsaken app, arguing with people I’ve never even met and might not even be real people as far as I know. (I refuse to believe that Tony Posnanski dipshit really exists in the world.) Dunking on centrist goons is like eating Doritos. All fun and delicious but it never truly brings you fulfillment.
But some good did come of being Terminally Online this week. I got the band Wheatus to admit that they fucking hate Joe Biden. That was definitely the implication here as I understand it and this is legally binding:
Oh, and back to bands supporting Bernie, here’s a screengrab of Black Flag/Descendents/ALL’s Bill Stevenson* (I’ve decided that whenever I mention someone who also appears in MY BOOK, I’m going to put an asterisk* next to their name) on TV at a Sanders rally this week. I watched all the relevant videos on 9News’ website and couldn’t find this shot but I want to believe it’s authentic!
More people I would like to thank for their, uh, music
I get pitched on a LOT of bands and a LOT of albums and I don’t have the time to cover everything and I’m usually fine with that. I’ve never really regretted missing the boat on a band because I’m always drowning anyway. But a couple of years ago I was sent this Mike Krol album and said ok cool thanks I’ll check it out. Two years later and I’m just now giving it a proper listen. So, I’m very late here, but the hook-writing on this thing is just perfect. Not a bad song on the whole album.
Also, Augusta (formerly of Cayetana) crushed it on this debut Gladie LP. There were things to like about Cayetana’s second (and I guess final?) LP, New Kind of Normal, but it suffered from something that I still can’t put my finger. I think maybe the band evolved too much too fast. But Gladie sees Augusta in a whole new vehicle that I think fits her really well:
If you’re a big screamo/emotional hardcore fan, Repeater Records is releasing a discography collection from You & I*. If you’re unfamiliar, they were an influential Jersey band that I probly saw a thousand times in the early 2000s and no, that asterisk was not a typo—they, also, weirdly get a mention in MY BOOK. Anyway, they’re taking pre-orders now.
And now that I’ve smoothly transitioned into heavier music recommendations, I somehow ended up on the Hydra Head bandcamp page the other day and came across this scorcher by Japanese “catastrophic noise-metal outfit” Endon:
Also, my boy Mark did his semi-annual record dump this month and a bunch of cool hardcore EPs fell out of it, including Snarling Hate, Mangled State, and his own Life Support record, Die Like a Man.
And I saw this band Niis the other night. Kinda like bratty speed-punk and their name is a pain in the ass to search for but I did find em on Spotify:
In case you missed it, I interviewed Lauren from Worriers about their new album, You or Someone You Know. That’s out today and you can finally listen. Lauren played an intimate lil launch gig at this place called Junior High this weekend where the audience was mostly children and one dog. Here are a couple photos I took of that. See if you can spot the dog…
Ever since I recommended the trainwreck film Homie Spumoni, which I watched again this week and is even more offensive that I remembered, my DMs have been filled with people saying things along the lines of “dude I watched that movie you wrote about and WHAT THE FUCK MAN.” I’m getting a lot of them so let me try to give a blanket answer: I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck, man.
OK that’s it for today. I hadn’t done a Rank Your Records interview in a while so I lined up a couple and will roll ‘em out soon. One should be going out next week and it’s over 4k words long. That’s 4k words of free journalisms! If you’re digging REPLY ALT, maybe upgrade to a paid subscription? I sent out a subscriber-only email this week with helpful tips for writers about landing an agent. I’ve heard that a lot of people in The Music Biz subscribe to REPLY ALT. If that’s the case, just put a subscription on the corporate card! You can write that shit off, yo!
I'd like to thank..diarreahr PLANET