Hospital, Obamacare, Aaron Hernandez

Ok, you're going to have to bear with me here.  I am typing on my ipad and my wireless keyboard's not working.  Either the batteries are dead or my keyboard, like millions of other apple keyboards apparently, shit the bed and the only fix is to drop a tiny tinfoil ball into the battery compartment because apple products are overpriced pieces of garbage.  In any case, I am tapping away with my index fingers like a kid in computer class, so please excuse any typos and also the wonky formatting.

Tonight is my first night in the hospital.  I called in the afternoon and was told my bed would be ready by 5.  Of course, it wasn't actually ready until closer to 8 but Ill get to that later.  My mom took my girlfriend Heather and I to an early dinner for one last meal before my hospitalization and prolonged recovery.  Thai noodle place.  I had a Thai iced tea, my favorite.

We get to the hospital around 5 and meet up with my sister at Brigham and Women's.  We go to admitting and I check in.  I'm told it will be another hour because they have to clean the room.  Annoying, but not unsurprising.  Waiting is the name of the game here.   I finish signing in and take a seat with everyone.  My mom is talking about having to wait another hour when a middle-aged woman comes up to us.  She appeared to be a manager of some sort.  She immediately assaults us with a rant about how an hour is actually not long at all, before beginning a tirade about how Obamacare is responsible for longer waits because hospitals are forced to slash jobs which affects the rate of room turnover.  My mom tried to ask a question and the woman snaps, "excuse me," and continues to talk about how the snow birds from Florida all come up this time of year to get their medical care in Boston, cancer patients are living longer than they were five years ago, and how people in general are living longer and a man in his 100s had knee surgery. All these things lead to an increased wait at the hospital.  

Thanks for the diatribe you miserable bitch.  It was pretty funny how she seemed to resent people getting medical care...god forbid cancer patients are living longer, if it gives her more paperwork to do. After that display, we decided to walk from B&W to Dana Farber (two separate hospitals connected by a bridge; I am a Dana Farber patient but do all my outpatient stuff like radiation and transplants at B&W).  We sat in the meditative garden at Dana, which is an indoor garden with windows overlooking the street.  Very relaxing place to be, although someone should tell them to lower the volume of the bird chirping.  My dad says when he's in there he is always tempted to pick up a couple of the rocks and put them in his pocket.  We stayed there for the rest of the hour before heading back.

When we returned to the admitting waiting room there was a middle-aged couple walking one of their mothers around the waiting room.  If you could ever use more old people in your life, hang out at a hospital.  I look at them and sometimes I share their hope to get well.  Other times I visualize a tombstone.  This woman looked somewhere in between.  While she's being walked around, my sister asks about Aaron Hernandez, so I give her the basics:

"Well, he killed a couple people a few years ago and he just killed a guy who knew about it."

Then I hear the daughter of the old woman say, "Let's wait until he's convicted," as she starts explaining the case to her mother.  That is a true Patriots fan.

So time is passing, and my mother is getting anxious.  How long are they gonna keep you waiting, this is unbearable, etc.  My sister and I decided that our mother can be a time bomb, where each tick of the clock is a mini explosion itself.  Soon my mom delivered her favorite (possibly only) criticism of my girlfriend: "You need to use Dawn.  That health store stuff doesn't cut grease."

Eventually I am admitted, meet my lovely nurses, and set up shop.  I don't think this will be too bad.  The hospital sucks but this is the first step in it being all over.

Hope you stuck with me during this longer, music-less post.  It is hard to embed videos and shit on the ipad, but I will do my best.  I think my next post will be about Regeneration Records in Boston and some fun memories from time spent going to shows and shopping there.

Goodnight

Dead Fucking Last

Epitaph Records. One of the major punk labels of the 90s (no, not THAT kind of major, although it depends who you ask), they were responsible for getting lots of kids into punk in the 90s. The first couple Punk O Rama comps were an awesome way to hear classic bands like Agnostic Front or Poison Idea for the first time, and also become acquainted with the bands of the time. When I bought My First Punk CD™ (Rancid "And Out Come the Wolves," a purchase and experience that will get its own post later in this blog), it came with an Epitaph order form. Reading the form I saw there was a band called DEAD FUCKING LAST.  That sounded like a must-have to a young punk like myself. I picked up their CD "Proud To Be" shortly after and it remains of my favorite records to this day.  I consider this band to to be one of the underrated gems of the Epitaph catalog.

DFL was from the LA area, active from like 93-98, releasing a few EPs and three albums (including two on Epitaph). It is sort of perfect to post them after my Reagan Youth post, because DFL nailed the early 80s NYHC sound. Their sound is somewhere between an updated Reagan Youth and the Beastie Boys hardcore stuff, which might not come as a surprise when you consider they were once signed to Mike D's Grand Royal label, Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys played bass for them at one point, and also produced the "Proud to Be" record.  (It should also be noted the Beasties themselves were influenced by Reagan Youth, having played with them during their early punk days and covering them at live shows later on).

Beastie Boys never forgot their roots

DFL borrowed heavily from their influences, but they added their own twists here and there, throwing in some murky slower sections and not always going for the balls to the wall 1-minute hardcore blast.  Overall though, this is straightforward hardcore and it is fucking raw, raw, raw.  The production is rough but actually very balanced: the guitar is a relentless high pitched buzz, like an electrical wire shooting sparks at everyone, but it is paired with booming bass guitar in your face.  No song sums it up better than this bad boy right here:

Don't get me started!!!!

The guitar comes in, and then bass tackles it and is what really defines the production.  The production is similar on the Beastie Boys hardcore jams linked above, and I really appreciate how the bass's traditional role of supporting the guitar is flipped on its head.  The vocalist sounds like he just got his braces tightened  and doesn't care about singing every word perfectly, while the dude who does backing vocals has a voice that rivals Civ on the first Gorilla Biscuits 7" in terms of voice cracking.  In Civ's defense, this guy is practically tuneless:

All these shortcomings work together to create a damn good sounding hardcore punk record, if you ask me. I am now just going to post a few more tracks from this record.

EVERYBODY MAKES ME SICK!!!!!!

Too much society's pressure....

And here is one for Aaron Hernandez.

All the tracks I've posted so far are from the Proud to Be record (1995) which is probably the band at their best.  In the interest of celebrating their entire discography here are two songs from their "My Crazy Life" (1993) and "Grateful..." records, respectively:

I want pepperoni, you want extra cheese

This sounds like it could've come out on the 1982 MRR "Not So Quiet on the Western Front" comp

Anyone else like this band?   Ok, thanks for reading.  Stay cool.

Reagan Youth

Senator John Kerry at left

It was not hard for me to decide to do my first post on Reagan Youth.  For a fantastic band with a classic sound that was active during the vibrant early NYHC scene, I do not think they get the credit they deserve.  They did not make as much of an impact as Agnostic Front or the Cro-Mags, but they deserve to be mentioned alongside them.

I was a young punk when I first heard Reagan Youth on the New Red Archives "At War With Society" sampler CD (which cost $.99 as a super punk diss to the samplers from Epitaph and Fat which were so popular).  I immediately picked up the "A Collection of Pop Classics" CD which combines their 1984 EP "Youth Anthems for the New Order" (here called Volume 1) with the heavy metal oriented Volume 2.  Most of this post will focus on Volume 1

Boots with chains, a furry hat, and a young Jimmy Gestapo

This is quintessential old school hardcore punk.  Fast and energetic, irreverent and political, straightforward yet ironic.  The shouts of "Sieg Heil" in the eponymous track "Reagan Youth" would be utterly cringeworthy nowadays, but it works here (this could be applied to a lot of moments in old school hardcore/punk).  The music is not poppy, but it's also not super mean sounding.  The production is raw but not weak.  Great snotty vocals that tie everything together.  One of my all time favorite guitar tones, lo-fi and drenched in fuzz but not blown out.  It sounds like they found the sound they wanted then accidentally bumped one of the knobs all the way up without noticing.  I mean come on, listen to this:

"I might not climb the social ladder, but I can climb the schoolyard fence"

My good friend Zach used the above quote as his senior quote in high school before going to MIT and eventually graduating with a perfect GPA.  I think the reason we get into punk and hardcore is because we relate, to the lyrics, the music, or both.  This song + lyric are instantly relatable, if you aren't some stuck up asshole.  Even Zach the scientist can relate to that fantastic lyric.

"I as in M-E fucking ME!"

Another great song.  When the fighting ends the war is won.  Hate is a wasteful emotion and it is a boring subject and such an easy thing for people to use as a lyrical theme.  Very few bands have pulled it off.  It is much more interesting to go beyond your hate and talk about THAT.  I would argue that generally, the great motivator in the best hardcore/punk bands has been anger, not hate.  

This song became the song played by the band in "Airheads," which still sort of blows my mind, but the truth is it is a damn rocking tune.  Check that fantastic guitar solo, really tuneful and well written.  You could tell early on that the guitarist had something going for him, and even though most of Reagan Youth's later heavy metal stuff is not that great, it does have some great Hendrix-inspired soloing:

This song is awesome but overall, the later Reagan Youth songs are too depressing for me to listen to.  It is heroin-soaked Led Zeppelin worship that makes me think of how the band had turned from energetic punks to doped up messes.  It is especially sad considering singer Dave Insurgent's downward spiral and eventual suicide

Oh yeah, couldn't complete this post without posting this fantastic cover of  "Degenerated" from some weird band called Puzzlehead, on the God's Chosen People compilation.  Get past the intro and it's a really creative, but also faithful cover.

Welp, that about wraps this up.  You made it to the end.  I will get another post up in the next day or two.  Thanks for reading. -H

(Re)Mission Impossible: Introduction

Hey everyone.  I'm going to get a lot of background crap out of the way with my first post.  As you might know from the "about me," I have been fighting Stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma for almost two years and I have started this blog to help keep me sane while I recover from my second stem cell transplant which I will be undergoing in a few days.  My recovery period will be long and strict so I will use this blog as a way to connect with the world and write about things I like.  The name "(Re)mission Impossible" refers to the fact that several lines of treatment have been unable to get me into remission and this procedure is my last chance.

Every post will have to do with music in some capacity.  The focus will be on hardcore/punk, but there will be a few posts here and there that fall outside the punk genre.  Some posts will be dedicated to a single band while others might be about a particular record, a style, a scene or era, or even a just a memory or a story from my own life.  I want to share music but I also want to share my perspective, as I celebrate great bands and records and relate them to my life.  The emphasis won't be on downloads, but I will post download links for some music that would be otherwise hard to find.  Ultimately I hope people will read my blog and enjoy music they hadn't heard, appreciate what I write about music they already know, and get a kick out of whatever else I end up typing.  And of course, all comments are encouraged.

This is the boring post to get things started.  Bear with me as I figure this thing out and work on the layout and update everything.  I am working on the first REAL post which I will get up later tonight.  Hint: An 80s NYHC band with a tragic ending.

Thanks for reading.

H