- Pink Eyes, Fucked Up -

P’s Take: Just recently it has been deemed cool to be a nerd. I guess ‘cause of the information economy maybe. I have no idea what that is. But, whatever, it’s not cool to be a nerd, fuck what you heard. But, here’s another “but”, most of us are nerds anyway, so even if it ain’t cool (it’s not, we just went over that part) it should at least be comfortable.

Like the Fucked Up show we went to last week. The place was nerd heavy. I mean packed with fucking geeks. The place wasn’t even crowded and still managed to be FULL of poindexters. I am not excluding the band, nor would they wish me to. Fucked Up looks like they emerged from a High School band room and picked up the singer from his shift at Wendy’s. Pink Eyes is fat, takes off his shirt and does antics. Not like G.G. schtick, more like if John Candy was into punk rock. How awesome would that of been? Also he smells like moussaka and dog and he likes to hug people. Yah.

And they played one of the best shows I have seen in years. Cause they are fucking nerds, they mean what they are doing from the bottom of their earnest nerdish souls. They tore the mutherfucking roof off, then put it back politely. When Pink Eyes fattingly and smellily  jumped off the stage it was to sing and to clown around and fuckin hug people, not to do a flurry of combinations in the air (cough, Freddie Madball, cough) or do hardcore poses (cough, everybody,cough). While howling, they made me remember being an ugly, broke-ass teenager yelling to records in my room even though I am now an ugly broke-ass growed up. God bless hardcore. God bless Fucked Up. God bless moussaka and fat nerds.

T’s Take: The FSS has been fucked up at Maxwell’s on a couple few occasions. Not to be confused… last week we saw Fucked Up at Maxwell’s and there was so much joyousness on hand that alcohol was not necessary. Remember this feeling? Sixteen years old at a show and having a retardedly good time off the sheer fun of the music? No one was jaded or too cool to freak out. It’s a beautiful thing and it’s something I hope I get more of in the near future. So thank you Fucked Up…my new favorite Canucks after the McKenzie brothers.

I kept thinking of History Lesson Part 2 by the Minutemen where D. Boon says “Punk Rock changed our lives.” in the same breath as “We were fucking corndogs.  We’d go drink and pogo.” I looked over to Brother P a couple times during the set and we were both smiling and pissing our pants laughing throughout. Pink Eyes worked the crowd like nothing I’ve ever seen. Hugging people. Throwing his mic then cartwheeling through the pit to get it back. Ordering root beers between screaming the chorus for Crusades. Sprawling out on the bar and slamming empty beer cups on his head. Most of this done in his underwear. Fucking. Fucking. Awesome. Corndogs indeed.

Three count em three guitarists plus bassist and one of the sickest drummers around only added to the mayhem.  Not to mention like Pink Eyes they all have great monikkers like 10,000 Marbles, Mustard Gas, Gulag, Guinea Beat, and Young Governor.  Off the top of my head they played The Two Snakes, Crooked Head, Twice Born, I Hate Summer, Black Albino Bones, No Epiphany, and Bodies by the Sex Pistols as an encore.

Remember at the end of Step Brothers where the father is all upset that he forgot how to be a dinosaur?  Fucked Up are the fucking dinosaurs of Hardcore.  All bands should operate in this manner.  All shows should be this much fun.  All Wednesdays should be this great.

All right. Lemme explain this quote and it’s relevance to this article. Nowadays to be a nerd is not only acceptable, it’s something to aspire to. It means now to be an extreme enthusiast about something. Movie nerds, comic nerds, tech nerds and lots, lots of music nerds. Cats who know, or think they know a lot about a subject. In this age of rampant half-assery, devotion to something, anything is laudable. Fine. Only most of these cats are straight fronting. Fronting about being nerds. They ain’t fat they ain’t nothing. I just like saying that.

What I mean by this is that I recently got finished attempting to finish Bomp!’s biblical “Born In The Garage”. Edited by Suzy Shaw, present head of Bomp! and Mike Stax, some cat who I don’t know. This book is the realest of real deals where music nerdship is concerned.

It is 300 and 11 pages long. Dense, dense text of Rock and Roll research. Would you like to know more about Swedish bands attempting to sound like they were from Liverpool in the mid to late ‘60’s? Want to track down some Mexican garage band? Wanna read some guy from Garfield, New Jersey’s 35 year gone impassioned plea for old Decca singles? You can read all that and more here.

Anybody who ever wrote for Greg Shaw’s Bomp! zine between the years of 1970-1981 is reprinted here, in the creepy original mimeographed text. This is so thorough it is damn near unreadable. It spans the rockabilly revival through to garage rock experimentation to the birth of punk and everything in between. All of it written by fans, people like like Mr. Shaw himself, Lester Bangs, Ken Barnes and a nameless horde of vinyl buyers. Now, let me get back to the point I made earlier. Bomp! The Fanzine was conceived way before the intertubes, all of this business, every painfully researched, borderline autistic bit of fandom was dug up in record shops from here to Tijuana, banged out on typewriters and then rolled out on those machines in blue ink that we used to take quizzes in back in grammar school days. Think you’re clever cuz you know when Kajagoogoo put out their first single? Think you’re devoted cause you ordered The Arcades Fire’s Japanese singles? Think your deep cause you wrote your thesis on The Donna’s debut album? Fuck you. In them old days people drank harder, loved harder and nerded harder, without a router in sight suckas. You ain’t fat, You ain’t nothin’.

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