Don't be so godamn fucking lame, you motherfucker. You know you have a film you want to make so that you can send it to me here at the Punk Movie Nights headquarters. How many times can you spin the same drunken yarns down at the waterfront, or the bar, or the club? We don't want to hear that shit anymore, because there's too much information to be expressed in a simple, slurred anecdote. Take those vivid memories that you are unable to contain, and turn them into an underground film that will finally communicate what you've never been able to successfully express orally. Are you still here? Man, this ain't no joke. We're starving for your films here. Our VCRs are warmed up, and the ramen is boiling, so get your priorities straight. Finally.
Does that ever happen to you? Your inner voice that is always right when you are wrong forces itself through all of the inhibitive barriers that you've created in order to block it, so that you can maintain your personal status qou, or in otherwords that comfortable level of mediocrity that prevents you from actually achieving half of the stuff you're always telling yourself you're capable of? Oh, it doesn't? It just me you say? Well, doesn't that beat all. Here I am trying to relate to my readership, but in reality I'm only really succeeding at using this column space for some kind of lame cathartic outlet for my own insecurities as an artist. I don't believe by the way in applying the term artist to myself because, as Brando once put it, Picasso and Mozart were artists. That's Marlon fucking Brando, and if he doesn't even dare to put himself into such company, then I'm smart enough to recognize his line reasoning. The point of all this is that I should be making, and finishing, more films, but so should you. I wish I had so many underground films to watch each month that to even fit them into this column would be nearly impossible, and implausible. We can do it. Are you with me punx? What? You're broke? Of course.
Let's put aside all of our differences for now, because I got the hook up down the street at the U. C. (Uniform Choice, yo...), and tonight they're going to let me host one final evening of Punk Movie Nights before they install the Starsucks Coffee counter.

CITIZEN FISH
"Gaffer Tape"

GAFFER TAPE is the kind of film/video that will someday accompany all retrospective type CDs by prominent recording - and touring - artitsts such as CITIZEN FISH. It's already happening on much smaller scales (and much larger, i.e., major labels, but that's all a bunch dishonest promotional style crap that doesn't deserve to even be mentioned in the same breath as one would CITIZEN FISH). CHARLES BRONSON included concert footage on their recent release of "Discrappy," on CD. This is not to say that GAFFER TAPE doesn't warrant the type of video release that it currently enjoys through CITIZEN FISH'S own Bluurg Records. On the contrary brother. I wish that more bands would tackle a project like GAFFER TAPE. Too many punx have lost site of the simplest differences that are supposed to separate punk from other forms of music and culture, and that is the egalitarianism that should exist on all levels of the punk scene. From zinesters to bookers to roadies to bands, and yes even bands that are capable of selling out one of our tiny little punk clubs. Okay, with that rant behind us, CITIZEN FISH takes us behind the scenes with them as they hit the road with their friends and roadies, all of whom represent a very diverse cross section of the d.i.y. underground. You have Karoline the roadie/photographer/MRR representative, and you also have Mark Bruback the spoken word artist, and you have Pete The Roadie who carries a utility belt on stage with him, and always responds, "chiarz - chiarz," whenever I hand him a zine, and then on the other end of the spectrum you have Sarah from Urban Hermit zine. Sarah once wrote about how disappointed she was in punk rock after having had a negative experience at a GUTTERMOUTH show, which is neither here nor there. You also have all of the various members of CITIZEN FISH, some with cameras, coexisting with one another as they tackle yet another tour in their long and storied history as punx. It's a job, but one that everyone involved seems to enjoy doing. It's also very underground and d.i.y. still after all these years, which is maybe not the impression one would get if they were just to show up at a sold-out club the night CITIZEN FISH happened to be playing there. Of course by the second half of GAFFER TAPE, CITIZEN FISH are playing some shows for an audience of 3 or 4, but that's a different set of tours entirely.
I recently interviewed Dave Chavez from CODE OF HONOR, SICK PLEASURE, VERBAL ABUSE, etc., and in Dave's opinion Dick from the SUBHUMANS and of course CITIZEN FISH is one of only a small handful of lead singers capable of taking an audience to what he referred to as the next level. If you are in agreement with this statement, then one of the weakest aspects of GAFFER TAPE will be without a doubt the fact that there is very little footage of an entire performance of even one entire song by CITIZEN FISH. GAFFER TAPE is edited in a similar fashion as one might expect to find while watching a network television news report on narcoleptic Doberman pinchers. That is to say that everything is moving fast, and information is condensed for the sake of fitting in as many angles as possible into a limited amount of time set aside for the project. I have to admit that I would have loved it if there had been at least one concentrated effort to capture a live performance in it's entirety, but I would have also been equally let down if some bigger point or message didn't emerge due to an excess of live show footage.
The message of the film is one that should not be ignored by anyone who thinks or ever thought that they were ever a punk, and that message is that punk is a life choice. It's not just a phase, or a rite of passage, but a conscious effort to live your life in a truly alternative fashion. Alternative meaning, as Dick puts it, that you don't just fall in line with what society expects from you, and that you don't do something as life wasting as say working everyday of your existence at some job you despise so that perhaps for one week a year you can live like a free human being. Dick plainly states that given the atmosphere he grew up in, punk saved his life. Watching Dick look into the camera while he expresses that sentiment, that I share along with so many others here at MAXIMUMROCKNROLL, meant much more than watching CITIZEN FISH live ever did. There are some people who are capable of pulling that message from a live performance, but for me it's far more effective to see that message delivered in the down to earth fashion it is on GAFFER TAPE.
I might be the only MRR columnist who doesn't have a college degree, but it don't take no college smarts for me to realize how important our elder active punks are to the scene, and our future lives as punks. I hope that CITIZEN FISH does another one of these projects in ten years, or that MRR considers doing another "Punks Over 30 or 40," issue, because it's a lot easier to be a fearless teenaged punk rocker than it is to be fearless middle aged one. Chiarz!
(£8 postage paid, Bluurg Records, 2 Victoria terrace, Melksham,Wilts, SN12 6NA, ENGLAND - www.citizenfish.com)

Please insert into Punk Movie Nights column just after my review of GAFFER TAPE. Thanks.

JAY: Was the GAFFER TAPE video a planned out project? Was there an objective you started with, and do you feel that you satisfied that objective in terms of what you ended up with - the video I just watched?
DICK: GAFFER TAPE was the result of bassist Jasper's continual camcordering of us, the band, as we go about existing on and off tour. He's made a previous video THIS ONE'S FOR FRANK which was a collection of live trax from various gigs; GAFFER TAPE as you've seen is far less music orientated and much more background personas/everyday things. Jasper took ages getting it put together with the help of a friend with an editing setup, and he would show us a section at a time for any critiques we may have. We all think the end result is fluid enough to keep the attention span alive, and we're not like embarrassed by it, so yes I reckon it turned out well!
JAY: How did you meet all the various roadies seen in the film? How many years do your relationships go back? I just saw Pete walking down Telegraph, and I always wonder when I see him if he doesn't just wish he was on the road 365 days of the year.
DICK: Pete we've known for decades, he now lives in Oakland. He has not been on tour with us for a while now cos we had a bit of an emotive fallout - still good mates, no damage done, etc!
Richard the roadie is a kingpin for us, he drives us in his self maintained van, and roadies, and brings along the AK Press bookstall, and likes us, and is a great bloke! We met him via Kamala when she organised our first USA Tour with CRINGER in 1991.
Karoline and Paige we met through Richard. Karoline has been on several tours and is the Ace of Merch! Paige was on the one tour that got onto this video, a rare occasion when we had a sound person with us.
JAY: At the end of GAFFER TAPE, you say that Punk saved your life. Did it save you from the type of life that so many of our family members, and friends trudge their way through because they believed that it's how life is supposed to be? Or did you mean quite literally on some level that punk saved your life?
DICK: Punk rock saved my life in the first metaphorical way, not the edge of a cliff way. I was being streamlined to go from A level exams to university, and I was a loner, and all frustrated without knowing what to do about it, and when punk came along it made me realise my emotional state could be a common one, and the music was a kick in the head to go with the anger and freeforall attitude it presented, and it was then OK to say NO without having to justify it! it really was 'i wanna be me', whatever THAT was! Yeah, a total mental evolution.

AGE
"Metalkrusher"

This is an entire live performance by Japan's ARMED GOVERNMENT ERROR, and I'm not really sure that most of the music on this tape would fit into MRR's area of coverage, but let's just step around that for the time being. I have to say that in the past I have bee in awe of Japanese punk and hardcore bands, and there have been times that I had to shake my head and mouth words like, "this band just crushes any band I've seen or heard from here in the last five years, at least." By here I mean this planet naturally. Sometimes I'd even go to shows and shake me head after some particularly lame band delivered yet another empty set that would have been best left in their practice space, and I'd pretend to look unfazed, but all the while I was thinking, "These bands really fucking suck." I'd wish that ASSFORT or GAUZE or TEENGENERATE were playing instead. It didn't matter which style it was necessarily because I go to all kinds of shows, well I used to anyway, and there was always some Japanese band that I could throw out there as an example of how the music should sound when it's done right. Okay, now that I'm finished with fuzzy flashback of an explanation let me get to this AGE video METALKRUSHER. AGE play full on metal for the entirety of this video, and the only obvious stylistic transition that takes place during the performance is when AGE moves back and forth between thrash influenced material and the black metal that seems to be everywhere on stage, while seemingly nonexistent in the audience. The thrash stuff is pretty damn decent, and the audience definitely appears to be enjoying those moments above all others, but then again the audience looks much more like a hundred impatient hardcore kids who would rather be at a CRUDE show than bearing witness to a group of black clad long hairs who pose and posture as well as any metal has before them. Unfortunately for a band with such a well thought out stage persona, AGE is only an average live band musically (which is all I have to go on folks). Now, before you send in all your nasty letters telling me what an amazing band AGE are, and how I missed the point by not listening to their records, let me remind you that this isn't the vaunted MRR record review section. It's a column, and AGE just didn't do it for me on this tape regardless of how mind blowing you believe them to be.
As far as the way this video is shot, and this information if for you fans who can't be dissuaded by my column, I'd have to say that it's one of the better live videos from both a visual perspective, and in regard to it's sound quality. I never found myself shaking my head, by the way, at any moment during the viewing of this video, and I even thought of a number of local bands that are better than AGE (LUDICRA, SANGRE AMADO, GRIMPLE's new stuff).
(Dewa Records, Yuuichi onodera, 89-11 Ishinada Tonojima Tsuruoka Yamagata 997, JAPAN)
Well that's it for this month, but I guarantee an even fuller calendar for future Punk Movie Nights. If you are reading this column for the first time and wondering what in the hell I am on about, then check out my past columns at WWW.WETHEPUNX.COM - and if you have something you would like reviewed, then please mail it to: Jay Dead, PMB 419, 1442A Walnut Street, Berkeley, CA 94709. Videos are cool of course, but I also have an 8 mm projector, and if you send return postage with your film I promise to return it in one (maybe two) piece(s). Paz.