coolest label right now?

[bazooka joe]

Here's what me and Pete and Meno (crazy Dutch freak) did at Burning Man:

1. We had a bar. A rock'n'roll bar with a killer sound system and a dj booth. fucking tons of great homebrewas that were there for the taking and giving and traded.

2. Met these kids with a desert scooper. It was a jeep with a giant net on top that could hold 25 people. There was a PA in the jeep and I got in, plugged in my portable turntable and played fucked up records out the windows while Meno played drums along with the records on top pf the jeep, underneath the net while we drove through the desert.

3. Went to a sushi bar. remember, this is in the desert. They had a p.a. in there so I plugged in again and played killer vegas grind instro 45's and such and started a dance party in the middle of the sushi bar tent.

there was so much more. totally weird shit.

[SSR]

I've never been and I am guilty of judging it by its fans.  In the past 5 years it has blown up so much that travel agencies offer tour packages for it, it gets regular run in the daily paper's lifestyle section, etc. in other words yuppies and slummers have latched on to it. That said, I am told by my label partner Sakura and some good friends that the time to be there is the week leading up to the burning, when people are setting up. My friend Larry has taken to leaving on Friday before the horde comes. I am sure it is fine and fun and all but not for me.

I have no beef with Pete. Like a lot of us who pretty much spend most our lives in a smaller city doing shit for locals who tend not to appreciate it until it is gone, he is a dork. But so am I.  I give him all the props he deserves for flying his freak flag in Reno for so long and not being beaten down by indifference and seeing what he loves about his city disappear as the yuppies decend. He is just fond of jumpsuits and released more than one Loudmouths record.

[vint]

I doubt the fans are much worse than your average garage rock/punk/rave/(insert whatever here) fans. People in general are stupid. I've always thought it sounded fun and first wanted to check it out when I heard about it tens years ago or so, but it's far away and costs lots of money.

Hell, I was at a few raves back in the mid-90s and the first one I went to was one of the best times of my whole life (the rest of them were fucking lame as shit though.) In fact, some friends and I are working on setting up an underground illegal music party in the rave fashion. We're working on finding a warehouse and shit like that right now. It'll probably take place next summer. I always thought punks were fucking dumb for not latching on to the concept.

[SSR]

In the late 80s & early 90s we used to do renegade shows. This one guy found that parking garages have electrical outlets so he got his (Pounded Clown) and a friends band to play one downtown. Just cruised on up with a PA and one set of equipment and the audience, set up, plugged in and played. Each band would play a song and then switch off til the cops came, if the cops came, and closed it down. The first time Los Huevos played was at one which went from 10 pm to 2 am, when the cops finally showed up. It was 12 bands and each band played 10 minutes and switched over. The cops who came saw about 200 people and told us we had 10 minutes to clear out before the back up came. Two hundred people packed up, cleaned up and split in about 5 minutes. One of the  last renegade shows happened when some idiots decided to do one downtown the night of the Rodney King verdict. As LA was burning, they set up and were immediately decended upon by Sacto's finest and two helicopters. Fucking morons should have waited a couple nights.  Since then there have been one or two, including one at a parking garage under the freeway. Lightning Bolt and Forcefield played that one. Forcefield were so loud and the frequencies so low that hundreds of rats scurried out of the parking garage and into the street. It was really fucking appocalypitic to see all these fleeing rats while this low, loud pulse and harsh noise was coming from a cement structure, in the middle of a moonless night.

[mayberry]

Two truisms in life: don't eat sushi in a landlocked state - let alone the desert; and don't attend anything featured on the latest episode of Malcolm In The Middle.  Alright, so I was flipping channels last week.  

[vint]

I meant more along the lines of a show that lasts all night long, till the sun comes up with kegs and acid and shit.

[Richie]

I think alot of guerilla rock/hardcore shows have happened in the Bay Area recently too (or semi-recently), playing at BART stations and shit, or shows out on deserted beaches, etc.. I do believe Dave Hyde did a piece with one of the guys who was setting a lot of them up in an issue of his zine. Great idea though.

[vint]

Yeah, this local band Modern Machines has played the BART before. We've played guerilla park shows before. You just take over a pavillion, bring along some bolt cutters. If you got enough people the pigs can't do much without having a riot - unless of course the kids are pussies, which they are around here, but not in places like Winona, MN and such.

[mayberry]

These grrrls from the Winona's Rock Solid Youth Center are totally ready to run riot!

[vint]

The kids in Winona, MN are some of the craziest fuckin' kids I've ever met in my life, and not always in a good way.

Once, after playing an illegal show there a hat was passed around to collect money for the bands, my band Hatefuck and my friends Hell On Earth each made three dollars. Then the hat was passed around again so everyone could chip in and get a keg, we put our three dollars back in the hat and added what little money we had into the mix. The people who hooked us up with the show, and the kids who were all very nice to us then took the money and "went to get the keg" then instead of giving us a place to crash for the night, one of the people led us to this island that rests between WI and MN borders and is home to a community of people who live on these boathouses, they're homemade shacks on the water, it's insane, anyway, they were supposed to bring the keg out there and there was to be a party, but instead, they just ditched us there.

I had been sold bunk coke there by one of my "friends" in the town that I had helped out a bunch with shows and stuff like that when I drove fuckin' half a day to see his band play, and then he tried giving my little sister, who I drug along with for some reason some real coke. That show was in a log cabin and they had fire dancers in the pit, a puppet show with puppets made out of animal bones and all sorts of other craziness.

The town is one of the funnest places to play, ever. The kids go nuts like no place I've ever been to before. They've got three legged dogs running around the place, five year old kids with mohawks skateboarding through the pits, people asking if you're looking for any "zingers" or "wah wahs" and other equally comparable oddness. They also have a fucking obsession with JB Weld in that town, and I'm pretty sure that a significant portion of their scene huffs the stuff. As long as you keep you keep an eye on your wallet and shit, it's a great place to visit.

[Scrod Prickknee]

Also, Vinyl Richie was from Winona, featuring this Chris dude from Appleton who was a really cool fucker. Their demo tape was actually really great early-sounding hardcore...I think they were around in the late '90s.

All My Circuits plays "renegade" shows around Milwaukee. I saw them on a dead-end street a couple months ago - Tab Man on a small kit sitting on a bucket, singer w/ a megaphone & battery powered amps for the bassist & guitarist. They're pretty decent, actually, though a Futurama-based hardcore band w/ songs about Reagan is too stupid to consider closely.

[bazooka joe]

holy shit I'm ready for some zingers and wah wahs! OH MY GOD I'M TRYING REALLY HARD NOT TO LAUGH OUT LOUD HERE AT WORK! BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH HHHHH!!!

[bob]

my band got asked to play this thing in Winona called "Ciderfest" by some punk dude.  i guess they have it at a pavillion and it's an excuse to make and drink tons of homebrew cider.  after reading what kevin wrote i'm glad we didn't play it.

[vint]

Your loss dude. I've made the, six plus hour trek for shows there sooo many times, and it's always been worth it. Even when they do rip you off. Seriously, some of the funnest shows I've ever attended or played in my life. Also, some of their local bands are really fuckin' good. Even if you don't like fuckin' blistering hardcore, it's hard not to be impressed by the sheer energy and power when their bands play. I never cared for the band Good Morning's records, but they were one of the best hardcore bands I've ever seen live. When they played kids were swinging from the fuckin' rafters and just going completely fuckin' apeshit, and the band was crazier than the crowd.

[vint]

I've never thought of the concept of renting a warehouse to live in. That's fuckin' ingenius! I'll have to look into that.

Did you know anyone who set up any of those things? You know how they went about renting these warehouses? I have a few friends that were rave promoters and from the sounds of it people are wise to the whole rave thing now which is why clubs are back in vogue. I wonder if you usually gotta lease those places or what?