As Seen From Space Part 2: the Lost Columns (Published Aug ’08 by G-Vegas Magazine)

by Corbie Hill

Over the past few weeks I've learned something the hard way... you have to live in Greenville to write about Greenville. Let me explain: I was Hawk Season. I wrote the column that started out, innocently enough, as a monthly music column and descended quickly into the realms of serious Gonzo madness. I've known for a while that I would be moving away to the Triangle, Carrboro to be precise, and my plan was to write a triumphant final column under my actual name before letting the next Hawk Season take over. Yes, there is a new Hawk Season. He's going to be writing in the September issue and beyond.

Give him hell. I plan to.

The big plan did as all big plans do... it didn't work. I've been through three drafts of my final column, the last one a dreadful chimaera of disjointed segments, and I'm starting over.

I moved to Greenville in July of 2006 and I didn't want to be there. See, I grew up in Eastern NC, in the sweltering wilderness of Pamlico County, and it wasn't a pleasant thought to be back. Just two years of this, just long enough for my wife to get through grad school, and we would be out. We'd just come from Asheville and we were a little spoiled. I didn't know it, but Asheville's music scene had gone into a tailspin that same summer and the world class scene we'd been closely involved in was faltering. The Smashing Pumpkins didn't help, either. They were actually the death knell. They "drew the attention of the world" to Asheville in a way that was only detrimental to local music. This is no paradox, dig it: Asheville's independent rock bands had been slowly clawing their way to the nation's attention when the Pumpkins' string of Orange Peel shows torpedoed all this progress, forcing the local scene to start over at the bottom of the ladder.

It's getting there again, Asheville's Drone Valley festival in September promises to rekindle some of our old glory. Not an excuse for complacency, but a sign of hope.

So that was the summer of '06... drinking PBR and resenting the new town, watching the old town's scene slide slowly downhill from a distance of five hours. Shootings and stabbings across the street at King's Arms, employment hard to land. I tried to find music downtown, but I couldn't find anyone who wrote their own songs.

The drought was not to last.

I don't remember who told me, but I remember my first Spazz show. The drummer from the two piece I played in up in Asheville drove down and we played a set. I had never seen anything like the place. It reminded me vaguely of Asheville's now defunct El Nuevo showspace, but it was huge! I don't know where these people had been hiding, but they knew their music and they came out to shows and actually acted like they enjoyed themselves.

So we had our venue, a place to go see music, but we'd acquired a taste for good beer up in Asheville and it was killing us to have to roll with what Lowe's Food had in stock. I mean, their selection was okay, but the personal touch was gone. It's good to be able to talk beer while you buy it, and this isn't possible with a 17 year old stock clerk who doesn't know the difference between a Lambic and an Imperial Porter. We were walking, my wife and I, when we saw an empty storefront across Charles Blvd from some worn down houses that would, incidentally, be torn down to make way for the Sheetz. Weird houses, dead kittens everywhere. The Sheetz I prefer to those creepy houses.

Shut up, Corbie. Finish the story.

I remember saying it would be perfect for someone to open up a real beer store in that spot and my wife agreed with me... but she said it was impossible. We had this sinking feeling we were the only beer snobs in town. I had this image in my mind of a little shop, packed to overflowing with swank Colorado beer, East Coast microbrews, and especially sweet stuff I'd never heard of, with nary a Natty or Miller Lite case. Impossible, I know.

Well, 21 Eleven opened up and our jaws hit the ground. Now 21 Eleven's doing so well that Lowe's Food has invested in a banner declaring "the biggest beer selection in town!" It's only the biggest, Lowe's, because you guys stock thirty varieties of Budweiser. Run scared, guys. You can't keep up with Richard's prices.

We started getting our beer at 21 Eleven and our music from the Spazz. Word from Asheville was not good and Greenville was being nicer and nicer to us. 21 Eleven went from being our favorite beer store to our favorite beer store/live music venue and we were making friends with some of the coolest people on Earth. That's when I learned the age old mystery of Greenville... it's a lousy town, of that we can all agree, but it's filled somehow with people whose equal you will never meet. What's up with that? There's a camaraderie among my Greenville friends not unlike the Rebellion from Star Wars. Just because Palpatine runs the show doesn't mean we voted for him.

So we lived with our villains. Nay, we flourished. We rode our bikes through traffic, laughing our asses off through close calls and blown out tires. We went to shows that kept going until 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning and showed up to work at 8:00 the next day, somehow more functional on the job with a head full of good music than on days we went to bed at midnight.

It came to be July of 2008, it had been two years. The house stood empty and a gigantic Penske truck idled in the yard. I didn't know what I would do without the Empire, I still don't know. I'm in Carrboro now and things here are, so far, quite easy. There are bike lanes the width of a Prius and hippies wandering everywhere, that glazed look in their eyes that says "I saved the world today, what have you been doing?"

The move has been hard, but I feel good about the future. I know this time I have not left a doomed scene, the Greenville underground will flourish and I'll be back every chance I get. No matter how many spaces are raided and shut down or how many times downtown resists the push of original music it cannot die. Obi-Wan Kenobi smiles at Officer Vader and puts down his light saber. "If you strike me down..."

Thanks Richard and Jeff for putting on the shows, you guys are in my rock and roll hall of fame for sure, and thanks Kevin (aka DJ Dog) for being such a rad editor. Hawk Season put some stuff in his magazine that, frankly, even I was a little scared of but he had the faith to print it.

Godspeed, rock on, and I'll see you around.

An Open Letter to Musicians Everywhere (published in G-Vegas Magazine, July '08)

Because even your best friend won't tell you.

Hello, Tony Hawk Season here. You're all doing it wrong. Sorry to break it to you, but it's better that you hear it from me. I'm with the government, and I'm here to help.

PRESS

In this information age, all weapons at your disposal are armed and dangerous. The press is the prime example. If used properly, the press is your best friend and key to better shows and exposure. This is especially tough in Greenville, where objective criticism is damn near impossible to find. In a town without critics, you're going to have to go in over your head (usually a good place to learn to swim) and get yourself reviewed by a regional independent. As a musician, you need the harshest scrutiny you can stand. No one takes one sided reviews seriously, for one, and you will get your best publicity nuggets from articles by seasoned critics. Sure, anyone can get reviewed by their friend. Get reviewed by someone with experience. Get reviewed by someone who doesn't even like what you play. If you can get them to say one nice thing and nine negative things, the one nice thing will be of guaranteed veracity and quality.

CROWDS

People don't understand this, more than most things. There are bands that would rather have their start playing to the backs of sixty heads in a bar, and that's fine, but there is no future in it. It's the bands that play in front of fifteen or twenty music lovers at 21 Eleven or the Spazz (the fronts of their heads, too) that are getting written up by the BBC, Pitchfork Media, Spin Magazine and the Boston Globe and this is a fact. You don't have to be huge to sell out, lots of people start selling out while they're still unknowns. Don't take the easy way out, don't concentrate on filling Boli's with the sounds of Third Eye Blind and Cracker covers. Remember, Robin Hood always wins. Do you want to be in the same camp as the Silent Years, Make a Rising, Darren Deicide, Caspian, and Emperor X? Easy money is easy, yes, but it smudges all over your soul and is impossible to wash out.

The Deathset was a featured band on myspace two weeks after their latest Spazz show, to provide a concrete example. I can't say the same for the bands playing downtown.

KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS

Fooled you! The title was sarcastic, as there are none. You're as capable as you think you are. You'd be amazed, but some of the best known bands out there bluffed their way to the top. Find someone who is totally out of your league, say a booking agent at a really good venue, and convince them you'll bring twice the crowd you know you can bring... then find a way to make those people appear. The best way to improve is to make impossible promises, then make them come true. Determination trumps everything, so aim as high as you dare and get to work on your poker face.

CLASSIFICATION

Don't waste time labeling yourself and especially avoid the buzzword of the day. Sure, you'll get your fifteen minutes, but then what? You practically stamp an expiration date on your product (yes, music is a product) through overclassification. In two years, people will be cracking up, saying "I can't believe we used to listen to bands that called themselves dancecore! That's the corniest thing ever!" You don't want to be the butt of their jokes. Call yourselves musicians, let the pundits classify you later. When you label yourself you also limit yourself, you lose your teeth. There's going to be someone out there who knows music better than you, there always is, who will know that No Wave is not a genre, but a band, and that Streetcore was Joe Strummer's last record... and why are you calling yourself that?

IMAGE

Okay, this could have gone under the "classification" section, but it extends beyond it. One thing it covers is ego... lose it. The desire to get in front of people and play music is egotistical enough, but anything beyond is unhealthy. Prima donnas, divas, snooty scenesters... all should be hunted down and tied to chairs, a la a Clockwork Orange, and forced to watch videos of how they behave in public. Youtubing "Turducken" should suffice.

SET LENGTH

Some of the best sets I've ever seen have only been six or seven songs long. I'm going to say it until I pass out, but quality always surpasses quantity. I've been bored to tears an hour and a half into a Pearl Jam show, and they're one of my favorite bands! Don't give me too much of a good thing, give me forty minutes and make every song count. Sometimes a band can play for an hour and get away with it (the Protomen and Caspian are prime examples) but not many acts can pull that off. Don't give an audience the chance to get bored with you. Show them what you can do and then leave the stage gracefully. One encore? Sure. More than that and I might just slash your tour van's tires.

SOUNDCHECKS

Unless you're playing for a few thousand people, just plug in and play. Seriously. You know how your amp works. It's not rocket science.

SOUNDS LIKE...

Don't lean too heavily on your influences. My stomach crawls and I die a little inside when a band tells me "Hi, we're _______! You'll like us if you like Soundgarden and Queens of the Stone Age!" See, right away the conversation is about Soundgarden. You've only backburnered yourself. If you're trying to book yourself a show, then be mindful of the way you portray yourself. Name dropping is lots of fun at parties, but you wouldn't do it at work. You don't go up to your boss and say "Hi! I'm ________! I work really hard, like you've noticed Steve doing, so I deserve a raise!"

Another thing... bands that identify too closely with their influences end up copying them. BEWARE.

CLOTHES

You should quit music the moment you feel obligated to wear any specific thing when you play. Music is a creative outlet and you should feel unencumbered by silly things like fashion or uniform. It's not what you wear, it's how you wear it. Maybe you wake up and put on a torn shirt and jeans, maybe you wake up and you want to wear a suit and tie or some wacko halloween costume or a Star Trek uniform... sure. Go ahead and wear it to the show but only wear it because you want to. I'd rather go see a band wearing Circuit City shirts because they just got off work and didn't feel like changing than a whole zoo's worth of scenesters.

By the way, everyone knows you can buy Ramones patches at Hot Topic. No one thinks you're hard core or underground for sewing them on a Goodwill jacket and sporting a sneer. That's about as punk rock as a sinus infection.

WHAT IS A BAND?

A band is a group of musicians. You can tell they are musicians because they write their own music. Anything else is a human jukebox.

THE GEOGRAPHIC CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

Don't be a jackass. Don't go to the Big City to "make it." Are you kidding me? Is this a movie? LA and NYC are just like the rest of the country, just more crowded. Prince is from Minnesota. He didn't move. He brought the attention to himself, and all of this was in the '80s. Slipknot may be a horrendous waste of airtime, but they've been wildly successful and are from Iowa. At the Drive-in? El Paso, Texas.

Don't take me the wrong way. I know I'm brash, it's just how I am, but I'm on your side! Don't wake up in the morning and curse the Greenville scene. There are people here who know music and this place has been the springboard for greatness plenty of times in the past. Remember Valient Thorr? That was just a few years ago.

It boils down to simple astrophysics. Every point in spacetime is the center of the universe. If you already are the center of your universe, then what's the point of running off to some smogsburg to prove yourself to the disenchanted millions already there? They have the same internet you do. Let them come to you.

I wanted to give a concise set of guidelines, but something has come up and I'm obligated to throw in a postscript. Here's hoping there's space, I've already gone several hundred words over my self-set limit.

We finally did it. We killed the Spazz. We're all a little responsible, and we should be ashamed. From those of us taunting the cops to those of us defacing the neighbor's wall to those of us setting off fireworks to those of us that stopped going to shows to those of us that would rather get crunk than donate. Now we'll all be washing our hands, smug little Pilates that we are, while the underground goes through its sad death throes. It's down to house shows now? Greenville is famous for house shows, but the Spazz was a special creature... a hydra with one head left and Hercules promised he was coming back to finish the job. Remember, 21 Eleven's last show is scheduled for August first.

As prophesied, the underground will eat itself.

I keep forgetting I have this internet website

But I do and I need to keep posting shit on it... I have a myspace now.

It's the 90s. I need to get with the 90s.

myspace.com/hawkseason

Come be my best friend in the world.

As Seen From Space, Chapter 1 (Published June 16, '08, G-Vegas Magazine)

It's easy to lose perspective, as is evidenced by last month. Following that debacle I put my favorite band t-shirts and cut off shorts in a bag and pushed my late 80s Volvo wagon out of town. I would do it with my bare hands if it came down to it. The time had come.

Perspective, man, I needed it. What's in our blood? Are we pure of heart and mind, is North Carolina representing the finest in music and art and culture, or is our fair state languishing in the tides of molester mustached new wavers and throwback metal? I was headed for a breakdown of herculean proportions, so I blew all my money on gasoline and PBR and got the f out of Dodge.

What I found frightened and amazed me.

Straight south, through the depleted flatlands, to Wilmington. The town is rich in film and has some of the most accomplished alkies this side of Cotanche, but the scene died horribly years ago. What's left is a collection of formulaic punk bands and trailer metal acts. The real shame is that Wilmington is home to one of the swankest venues in the state, the Soapbox.

There is hope, there are a select few who know the score and were instrumental in booking the recent We Fest. Some of my favorite bands in the state, such as the much praised Irata (if I have any faithful readers, they've heard lots about these guys), rocked this fest. The crown jewel, however, was the We Fest's Durham showcase. It takes supreme grace to admit when another town is The One. Thanks, Wilmington Musical Elite. I have no idea who you are, but you gave Red Collar and Hammer No More the Fingers the love they so deserve.

With a heavy heart I go west, blue skies and hangovers and gas station hot dogs, until the wheels touch down in the fabled lost city of Raleigh. I couldn't stop long, the swoop cuts in the Brewery gave me the evil eye for being older than seventeen and I nearly took a hacky sack to the head. I had to dig deeper.

Gray Young are the only band I know in Raleigh. Far from the cheap swagger of Airiel Down or the hackneyed neo-folk scene, far from the senseless noise of Walnut Creek. Nothing that happens in that place matters, anyway.

What Gray Young writes is music only they could write. I've tried for a long time to describe it, and can't. Just go to a show. It's good on tape, but the live show is what you need.

I landed in Durham at some point, parked crooked in a yard and obsessed for some reason on the generation of artificial wormholes. I would have drunk dialed Andrew, whose creations are the semi-rhythmic tone anthems of Pacific Before Tiger, but it was some ungodly hour with no name and cel phone signal had crossed the River Styx with gold coin sunglasses. Instead, I put Caspian in my CD player and waited for the sun to come up.

Straight up rock and roll is alive and well in Durham. Hammer no More and Red Collar, so badass they headline festivals in other towns, have made Chapel Hill and Durham the sharpest blades in the state. They're not the end all to Durham talent, not by a long shot. Maple Stave is quite possibly the baddest band to come from Durham, if only they would do more shows. Most math-oriented bands are so pointlessly cerebral that the majority of music fans give up for something less navel-gazing. Not so here. Maple Stave writes this music because it's what's in their heads. If you want cracked out time tricks that would make Tchaikovsky proud, then do yourself a favor and catch every single show these guys ever play even if you have to miss funerals and lose out on a will or two. Seriously, they are that good.

Trying to find Hammer no More the Fingers playing, but they're in DC! I wandered Franklin Street, a place recently taken over by the astounding and complex Durham scene, but nothing today. PBR at He's Not Here, and then west to Asheville. I couldn't even wrap my head around what's happening in Durham right now. So many good bands, so much raw energy. We could power some kind of spectacular space Volvo, fill it with colonists, head to neighboring stars...

Asheville. Hours and hours at the wheel (could Statesville be any more remote?) and some of the nicest scenery in NC later, and I was ordering a Pisgah Porter at Usual Suspects, watching Merrimon Avenue crawl by. I made some phone calls, tried to see what's happening. Some independent press darlings at the Grey Eagle, some has-beens at the Orange Peel (overrated venue), some suckers rambling about Bele Chere, and some true insanity at the New French Bar. The gutter punks were out at Gourmet Perks, a full fledged dumpster diver pissing contest had half the crowd distracted. They were in a circle like high schoolers around a fight in the halls.

I found some local noise at Fred's Speakeasy, playing a blown PA for six people, but it was the best music in town. Asheville produces, and then destroys, the most talented bands in the state. If you're too small, no one will come out to see you. If you're too known, no one will come out to see you either. They'll ramble about how cool you were "before anyone else knew about you" and won't go see you, simply on principle. The bands can't take it, they give up, and it's a tragedy.

It's a no win town, but it's filled with incredible musicians. If you want to go to independent music summer camp, go live in Asheville for two or three years, but be prepared to leave the moment you want to make an impact. If you're lucky, some of the local talent will emigrate with you.

I wrapped up in my military surplus mummy bag on my friend's porch, thrilled to death by the cool mountain air. I could live here, if not for the snobbery, but it was not meant to be. Back to the Volvo, back down the mountain, to Charlotte.

I've never felt like Charlotte is even a part of North Carolina. It's weird, but a lot of people know what I mean. Musically speaking, what few Charlotte bands there are that take to the road tend to tour south through Georgia and Alabama. I've heard good things about Calabi Yau, but we're never in the same place at the same time. Other than them, sadly, the rock scene is limited to punk bands that have a hard time distinguishing themselves from the wallpaper and the obligatory crap metal bands. I know there is more, I know there is true music out there, and I want to hear it!

Email me, Charlotte bands, I want to know the real scene up there. I went to your town, I couldn't find it. I was out of clean socks, which may have been a factor.

Come, faithful Volvo, we know where there's music in Greensboro.

We know where Irata, the Bronzed Chorus, and Invisible are. We know people crowd into the Flatiron to hear them play. We know Two Art Chicks is reopening under a new name soon, and that the state's best instrumental bands will again be forming like Voltron.

I felt good. I was going eighty, a feat in the Volvo, blasting through Death Valley with 61 miles to go... long enough to think. What did I learn, and what did I lose?

I missed some good shows, for one. Hammer no More, Irata, and the Bronzed Chorus all played Greenville while I was on the road, trying to find what's so great about this state. True, you have to leave the borders to get perspective, but the best bands in North Carolina will come to you if you live in the GVL. You just have to know which rocks to turn over. Keep the faith, no one west of Raleigh has ever even heard of Parmalee.

Sometimes what happens in Eastern North Carolina stays in Eastern North Carolina. My opinions are my own, of course, but I'll share.

Peace.

Off the Deep End (Published May 15, '08, G-Vegas Magazine)

I don't know whose house it was, and too many stories start like this, but so be it. It's Greenville. It's a party. In the tiny room in the front Irata was blasting, Hammer no More the Fingers waited in the wings. The Future Kings of Nowhere had finished their set, followed by some guy in a Soviet flag cape. The kegs bled steadily, empty by midnight when the bottles and cans took over. Everything flowed like mad, music and beer and things I can't mention in print and people wandering into the street with their Big Voices. Everything but beer pong... welcome to a show house.
Summer's coming, and I wanted to survive its fury, but that's just another aspect of life in the Underground. It's when the best bands come through. Case in point: Gifts From Enola's set last July 3rd. Maybe it was after midnight, but even if it wasn't I still consider it the ultimate Independence Day show. The indelible apocalypse crush of righteous post rock is all the fireworks I need... unless it's the literal fireworks that accompanied the last Wildildlife show. Didn't a guitar get smashed on July 4th? Do I have my facts straight? What's the capital of Bogota? Wait, that's the capital of Colombia... I digress.
Summer in Greenville is such a bizarre creature... you wouldn't understand it if you've never seen it. It gets so hot in the Spazz that reality becomes more distorted than usual, and bands that are eccentric enough in real life take on strange new dimensions. It's the castle scene from Willow all over again, when the troll gets blasted with the magic wand and turns into a two headed dragon that kicks everyone's ass and eventually explodes.
Summer brings shows like the New Thrill Parade, Ra Ra Riot, the Silent Years. It's the time to find the bands you could never even imagine, regular everyday people off stage who reinvent our concepts of music when they plug in. Did I mention how hot the Spazz gets in the summer? It's the time of year when the showspaces branch out, when show houses reassert themselves. It's the time of the year when the heat puts a Tim Burton twist on everything we see.
Going to a show house is like stepping into the Doors movie, minus Val Kilmer. Wasted like Jim Morrison, yes. Charismatic? Um.
Let's move on. I know I'm scattered as hell, but you have to bear with me. It's the show houses. They do this. They scramble the synapses. Myspace search every band I've mentioned. Also google Jon Crocker, the Protomen, Giants (the instrumental band, and not NC's Giant, they're different...), These Are Powers, Run on Sentence... that will do for now.
Summer in Greenville is not the time for floral dresses and tennis, it's a return to the cradle. We lose several steps of evolution. Canis Minor is occulted by the rogue planet Ellivneerg on its closest approach to the Earth between June and August and civilization drops away. The Great G-ville Halloween Debauch is croquet with grandma in comparison. Some people fear it, and are right to do so. It takes professional partying skills to go out and see these shows. The amateurs are gone. The pros, the dropouts, the employed, and the 8th year Juniors are all that's left. We don't have to soften our game. Otherwise peaceful bands catch the bacchanal fever and are swept into a frenzy of guitar smashing and crowd rushing. Blood, sweat, dirt, feedback... tidal forces.
The antimatter planet Ellivneerg swings closer to Earth than any other time of the year, in its perihelion it's barely outside the atmosphere, only a few hundred miles up from Greenville, intense gravity scrambling the populace and disrupting all but the most HD television signal. If the tidal forces of a full moon makes even the sanest puritan go wild, then imagine the result of a primal rogue planet hovering twenty times closer. Astronomy can't detect it, only wolves and the weird. We're sent howling down 10th street, chasing planetary phenomena that may not even exist.
The students head for the hills, evacuating until August, if August comes... Some apocalypse heads think the tidal forces may be too strong this summer and that Ellivneerg will tear Greenville from the face of the planet and hurtle it into the sun. Think of it as the ultimate hurricane party, taking jello shots with your closest friends, blasted on all sides by the most incredible soundwaves known to humanity, until the moment we plop into the sun like an ice cube falling into a river. The only survivors, the giant mosquitoes, left wandering through space towards any and all planets in their path ...or at least that's how it seemed to me while Irata was playing. God I love those guys.
I don't know whose house it was, and I couldn't print it if I did. The kegs bled steadily, empty by midnight when the bottles and cans took over, but so be it.
It's Greenville. It's a party.

The Ten Year Cycle and You: A Treatise on GVL History (Published May 18, '08, in G-Vegas Magazine)

Richard Faulkner runs 21 Eleven and probably knows origami.

In the late 1600s a tricked-out Honda pirate ship with 20 inch rims and blown speakers sailed up the Tar River, landing in what is now downtown Greenville. The crew that survived the treacherous sea voyage founded the Pirate Nation, which preceded the United States by over a hundred years according to historical graffiti.

The original colonists spent their time playing grog pong with the local Tuscarora Indians and racing their horses. No, literally, they had footraces against horses. The horses always won. This has always been the curse of Greenville, ever since the original pirates landed. We're always very good at what we do (the original pirates were very fast runners) but we so often apply ourselves to the wrong field (the horses were much faster).

All the ingredients are here for a world class music scene... so where is it? Historically, we've consistently given big love to the Next Big Thing. The Attic was the CBGB of the south (minus the passé t-shirts), high fiving the Cat's Cradle and trading bands like baseball cards. Anybody could play there, but Somebodies often did. Down the street, the penultimate record shop, CD Alley. Now, tomorrow’s legends come through town quietly, way under the radar. They’re here, but the venues aren’t the ones booking them. At least for today’s scene, the showspace will be its home.

The Attic is dead and CD Alley is gone. I moved back to town a few years ago, horrified to find a gym in its place.

What happened? What drove novelty underground?

“You go to Chapel Hill to see a band that's about to play Walnut Creek next time they come through. I think Greenville was like that in the 70s and 80s. I think it was like, right before bands got really popular we were the regional spot when people came through here,” says Richard Faulkner, contemplating the Sheetz parking lot from the couches of 21 Eleven. He sells a six pack of Ska Brewing's Brown to an ECU professor before continuing. “I know the Allman Brothers loved Greenville and used to call it their home away from home. The Charlie Daniels Band, too. Then In the 80s it kind of turned into Hootie and the Blowfish, near the end of the 80s, and Dave Matthews Band back when it was just Dave Matthews, or whatever his real name is, would come through a lot.

“Then in '94 Backdoor opened. That got underground. You could have a show in a space that's not designed to do a music show. I don't know if people remember. Like Peasant's? They started the whole Homegrown Network thing? I don't think that people know that that was started in North Carolina, like the whole String Cheese Incident and all those hippie jam bands. They had live music four nights a week, so you were guaranteed that one night would not be jam bands. They sold it to the guy that turned it into Aqua. That dude promised them when he bought it, it was a couple of old hippies, that dude promised them that he would continue to do live music and the first thing he did was put $250,000 in renovations to make it Club Aqua, to make it another booty club, then he sold it a year later because it was doing terrible.”

So much more could happen, so much momentum spent like water leaking through the frat house roof. We're like Wake Forest's basketball team. We always give the other NCAA teams a few surprises, and they remember how much fun it is to play us, but at the end of the day Carolina is still the star.

It goes like this (and it happens in every town): the best bands never leave their home base! The rule (exceptions are welcome!) is that a really spectacular band will arrive on the scene. People get the “WHOA!” factor, people come out. Touring bands on decent independent labels come through town and play with said band, they'll want the band to come play their town! Holy crap! Nothing could possibly suck, success is guaranteed! This is when the trap is sprung, and only the nimblest can avoid it.

Our local heroes will do one of two things. They either do a minor tour or two and retreat to Greenville to lick their wounds (to the tune of big money per gig, but no valuable exposure on the national market) or never tour and eventually stagnate as the audience moves on. After all, there's always another Big Thing. Bands exist on a ruthless ladder, chasing the flightiest of creatures: fans. It's evolution, it's Darwinism. The next Big Thing could always come crawling out of the swamp, baby, and move in on your ecological niche.

“What always disappoints me is that there's a school of music with, like, a thousand or two thousand kids that are studying music from people that are supposed to be the best in the world, it's been an accredited music school since the '60s, and there are no good bands around,” Richard said. “There should be a ton of good bands, you would think, there's all these people that know how to play music really well, and can play any instrument, and there's not more people that can put it together.”

If that isn't a call to arms, I don't know what is.
Audiences and bands are passing like ships in the night. Tours are coming through, thousands of hip college cats are on campus. Why don't they know about each other? Why do underground crowds diminish while cover band crowds thrive? To be specific, where is the Peasant's crowd that would be so into what happens at 21 Eleven?

“Maybe it's the way Peasant's marketed, or just because there were more hippies in town and hippies will do anything because they don't care because they're stoned and wandering around. Maybe that was it. Maybe they came and kind of countered the whole frat boy scene that was being established, obviously with Hootie and the Blowfish and Dave Matthews Band. The hippies came and were like, 'Nah, we don't like that,' so they kind of tried to stomp that out. Then, after that is where we are now and I don't really know what's after that,” Richard watched Charles Boulevard's evening crawl for a few minutes, squinting a little from the glare. This guy opened a small beer store and, in less than a year, has hosted as many touring acts per week as a proper venue. If not for the love of music, there would not be places like this.

Richard connected his thoughts, smiled for a second, and continued. “Greg Allman is supposed to be one of the greatest guitarists of all time, some people say. We've gone from that, and I don't like Dave Matthews either, but he always had a lot of talented musicians around him in the early 90s. We went from music to punk shows where anything goes to artsy type things with electronics, fashion. Fashion's part of it.”

The dystopic '80s gave way to the decade of hope, the '90s. The bridge to the twentieth century was almost built, almost complete, before it toppled. Now it's years past the y2k. January 1st, 2000 hit with a crushing defeat as none of our movies came true. We're past the future.

What do we do now?

The Overeducated Graduate's Guide to Incredible Beer

*guest column by Hikaru Pontiac*

Holy crap, it's graduation time! That sweet, sweet time of the year when thousands of twenty-somethings emerge from the egg cluster and migrate south through a mysterious process known to science as “ballooning.”

When you celebrate the metamorphosis, the emergence from your long larval state, be sure to do it with some higher class beer. Hint: don't buy any sixes with “light” or “ultra” in the name. Here are a few of my favorites.

Duck-Rabbit: This is the most appropriate choice for your ECU graduation celebration, since it's brewed 15 minutes away in Farmville! Respect their high gravity selections, especially the barleywine. Many an unsuspecting drinker has been knocked on their ass by this deceptively smooth concoction. My pick? Their Duck-Rabbit Porter, and its big brother the Baltic Porter, are two of the finest porters to come out of North Carolina. How Ham's beats these guys in the best local beer poll, I have no clue.

www.duckrabbitbrewery.com/

Great Divide: Only recently has this stuff come east to Greenville! A spectacularly original brewery from Denver, Great Divide specializes in beer's evolution. I recommend their Denver Pale Ale. Like anything they brew, the DPA is not just a standard pale ale, but their improved version of the style.

www.greatdivide.com

Flying Dog: A favorite of the late Hunter S. Thompson with label art by Ralph Steadman! I can only echo their tag line... “Good beer, no s***.” My recommendation? Old Scratch Amber. Very appropriate for the vicious hot summers in ENC, since the artwork features a huge mosquito.

www.flyingdogales.com

Victory: This is seriously strong stuff. Don't go for it unless you have the constitution of a mako shark, or you'll spend five solid weeks with a champion of a hangover. Their Hop Wallop, literally named, is a sadistically fantastic brew on par with skydiving in a severe thunderstorm. Golden Monkey is the penultimate celebration drink, and is definitely my recommendation from these guys. It's a kind and gentle golden beer, a sweet tasting Belgian with enough alcohol in it to make Andre the Giant see double.

www.victorybeer.com

This is my graduation gift. ECU's Golden Ticket gets you a fighting chance at a sweet job. Good for you. My gift to you is the ticket to better beer. Good for you.

Party safely and, for Buddha's sake, don't drive! Nothing's dumber than a drunk at the wheel.

Lucky #520 (published in G-Vegas Magazine. March 15, 2008)

“The thing about music is that there's no rules, you can do anything.” A-sharp

I have no idea how to start this, so I'm just going to start it. I've been through half a dozen failed shots at this story and I'm starting to think I left my brain in the 21 Eleven parking lot. My last few attempts were uselessly clever and collapsed under their own weight in the first 500 words, so I'm just going to say what I'm thinking.
I know a really nice guy who happens to be a really good rapper, and his name is A-sharp. You should listen to him. He's one of the founding members of 520 Entertainment, and he's just recently come out of hiding with an arsenal of fresh songs. He shows up with a bemused half smile and a CD full of beats. You don't know what to think of the good natured dude with the smartass glint in his eyes, until he picks up the microphone and opens his mouth.
“The thing about music is there's no rules, you can do anything,” A-sharp told me one night at my house. We were drinking ghetto blasters, listening to Deltron 3030, discussing the advantages of the Nintendo 64 over the PS2. A-sharp is very conscious of language. He's very careful with labels and names, he knows how easily music can get pigeonholed to death. From his beginnings as a blues guitarist to his current lyrical somersaults, it's been a long road to what he does now. A-sharp is to a point where his music is entertaining enough to make the booties shake, relevant enough to make the fists pump, and smart enough to make the brains grow.
Why did he disappear, though? Why haven't we heard from him in several years?
“ When we first started we performed a lot more. Me, Chris and Carl, it was just us three then. We performed at ECU talent shows and Dynasty and s*** like that. Then Chris moved to Atlanta. I kept performing. I performed all summer, back when Scores was still called Scores...Then, when Chris came back, we started recording. We didn't want to do shows because we didn't have a complete album to give away or sell, so it just seemed kind of pointless to be doing shows even though it wouldn't have been pointless, but we thought it would be at the time. We just got stuck in a rut of recording and recording and recording.”
It's tough to survive this scene without selling out or burning out. Downtown clubs change hands fast and often, but variety stagnates. The same tired cover acts shuffle members, jaded ex-rappers host atonal karaoke Tuesdays, and there's always the snide refusal of any booking agent who “knows how this town works, buddy, and can't help you out.”
Maybe A-sharp's years in hiding were to save his sanity. Getting off the ground is always tough, but the Greenville scene can be openly hostile to original music. This gets me down, but I hear only hope and optimism from A-sharp. He's been making connections at a lightning rate since his reappearance, specifically in the sensational Roanoke, Virginia, hip-hop scene (if you haven't heard, there's some serious music being made up there). His growing list of connections, coupled with a “divide and conquer” tour mentality make him (and the rest of the 520 crew) a force to be reckoned with.
“It's me, Chris, J-Burner, LC, my little brother (his rap name is Bones), and Haze. But yeah, it's six of us. That's why I was saying we could actually book up to three shows in the same day, because we could separate into two people groups. Right now Dan (Bones) is in Iraq, so it would be a little different, but we could still do two different shows,” A-sharp told me. “I want to focus on the east coast. We're doing s*** in NC, we're starting to spread into VA, I just want to do it like that. My friend went to Tennessee and she's going to try to get us some shows there.”
And what does 520 mean?
“Chris used to live at 520 Rustic Lane, in Belvoir, way out in the boondocks. That's where we used to write and record s***, and he didn't have any equipment like he does now. He just had a little $300 dollar Casio and the mixer was a grand, but that was about it. He made all the beats on a Casio. After a while he left, he moved to Atlanta...I had wanted to start an independent label while he was gone and I never thought of a name for it. When he came back he was like 'Why don't we just call it 520?'”
Behind A-sharp's, and all of 520's songs, are Chris's beats. Chris Knight and A-sharp started making music together in high school, right here in Greenville. 520 has come a long way. The Casio is long gone, replaced with proper beats that nod politely to modern influences while honoring their predecessors in the 90s. Chris raps too, taking the mic as often as any of the 520 crew.
Most impressive was the 520 set at the infamous/famous Turducken House's New Year's show. They went on early, not long after 10:00, to a packed house that knew all the words! I mean all the words, not just the choruses... Definitely check out the new stuff on his myspace (link at the end). I listened to it to keep my head straight while I wrote this, and it's pretty crucial. Especially “Flip It.” I can't get enough!
I'm going to totally switch gears now.
Rap is the new jazz. It's a purely American music style, and it evolves the same as jazz. The academics hijacked jazz, decrying any progress as sacrilege. Real music evolves on the streets and in dirty little house parties, in venues small enough to take risks. What do you think a speakeasy was?
Don't let the academics fool you, music is about evolution. Constant, relentless, often reckless evolution. Jazz was music by, and for, people with nothing to lose. Jazz was the cutting edge, but the academics got to it. Now it's wedding band music, true jazz was driven far underground. It's too edgy, it had to go semi-tonal to survive. Rock music speaks well, but it misses by miles on the improv front. When rockers go free form it's nightmarish... you end up with thirty minute Phish songs or worse. Jam bands are a blight on our fair planet.
Thus is jazz reborn in disguise. A real rapper, not just some Empty Vee loser flashing their pinkie ring, can freestyle like Dizzie Gillespie.
I've put it together, and I like it.
Myspace.com/adamsanturo is where A-sharp hangs his hat.
HawkSeason.Blogspot.com is a place you should never, never go.

MC Homeless and the Temple of Doom (Published Feb. 15, 2008, in G-Vegas Magazine)

It's been the weirdest January on record... so warm, and it's gone by so fast. I think it's doing something to my poor brain chemistry, and I doubt I'm alone. An owl almost landed on me the other night during my walk... not kidding. I'm not down with all these omens. Next thing, someone's going to tell me the Spazz was built on an Algonquin burial ground.
I think MC Homeless is with me on this. He's more of a Mayan doomsayer, but that's fine. He's just as optimistic as the other apocalypse-heads I know. I mean, he does tend to sound a little victorious when he says “2012 is not a random number.”
I don't know what possessed me, maybe it was the sleep deprivation, maybe it was the brainfuzz that follows my favorite high gravity beer around, but I wanted to hear the Big Hate. Specifically: what grinds his gears? Mainly I got unprintable rants on foreign policy and addled recollections of questionable legality.
“Anywhere that doesn't give me free beer for gracing their stage gets the Big Hate. Let's see... shady promoters get the Big Hate. As far as towns, though, I don't know. Every place I played on the last tour was cool,” said Homeless, whose birth name is unpronounceable by human tongue. He's been on the move for so many years now, living all over the place and touring relentlessly. He has to have played with some losers in that time... dig deeper.
“Who stands out as bad? God, I've played with so many bad rappers it's not even funny. Tali Demon. She went on tour with the Insane Clown Posse, and she had a little juggalo following, that was definitely the worst show.”
“What the hell's a juggalo?” I asked. I was convinced it was either something he'd made up or an obscure Australian marsupial.
“It was a great show, they just sucked. A juggalo is, like, ICP's fans,” he clarified. I need to Wikipedia that word... I'm still convinced it's some kind of miniature kangaroo. “Their CD kept skipping and it was the show where we were opening up for the Coup, it was that one, where I almost fought. It was Tali Demon and her Two Loyal Servents, or something like that, and it was these two hillbilly rapper guys... but, to make a long story short, they tried to rush the stage and fight me.”
“Her people?”
“Yeah, and they got kicked out. Then they fought each other outside and got arrested.”
“They got kicked out of their own show?”
“They were one of the opening acts for the Coup. I don't know why they put them on, they were just horrible redneck rappers. ICP just attracts the scum of the earth. Anybody who still wears JNCO Jeans.”
Homeless paused, smiling at something invisible for a second. “It's like the hip hop version of trailer metal. They're trailer hop. Really bad, bad news.”
It was a really nice night, one of those nights where you can solve any problem with a minimum of effort. 27 degrees, feels like 19. Overnight low projected to be 9 degrees… sunny and 9 degrees. Cold enough to think. I felt like Batman, back in Gotham City after years of vacation.
There are heroes of the national underground, too. I won’t call MC Homeless a hero, but he knows what he’s doing. Pretty much anyone can hop on Myspace, put up their band page, and book a national tour. There are benefits and detriments. I was talking to a friend the other night, and he was saying that MTV ruined the regional nature of music.
I found myself arguing in defense of Myspace. It has, in the positive, brought a new relevance to the independent scene. Music needs to be approachable. Music needs to be made by real people, not celebrities. Maybe the fever has broken, maybe the curse of MTV has been lifted. Regional success exists! In the independent touring scene is a more complex and complete six degrees of separation than Kevin Bacon ever dreamed of. The giants of the scene come through every few months, but they lift us all to the rare heights. We're in the presence of greatness, but not in its shadow.
Amen.
Then, there’s the downside. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes the most innovative band, beyond what you could imagine, shows up out of the random and blows your mind. More often, though, you’ll dig through endless strata of imitators of the latest sonic fad… and they’ll catch on faster because they sound so familiar. Still, the control is being wrenched from the hands of the mega-conglomerate record labels. Why else would iTunes, which is quickly eclipsing CD shops in music purchases, sell self-released music? There's a demographic that loves the realness, the sounds that no producer has had a chance to ruin.
Homeless and I were placing bets on the outcome to a fight to the death between Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus. His money was on Paris Hilton, but I was hoping for mutual annihilation. It's so punk rock, really, to make your own name in the music industry. When so many people buy their way in, or are born into it (through the strange crosseyed dynasty that gave us this Cyrus creature), it's so pure to make records and tours happen through hard work and intuition. Anyone can tour once... Homeless has done it three times a year for the past four years, and he doesn't even own a car. How does he do it?
I'm not sure. He was babbling about something that really confused him in the brain. I didn't catch all of it.
“...Sublime cover bands that travel the country and put out DVDs,” he was saying. “I was at Best Buy the other day and I saw that this band, I won't mention their name or anything, but they're this big Sublime cover band. They had a DVD out of a set they did, just covering Sublime songs.”
We're through the looking glass, people. Scary stuff. Danger stuff. Strange stuff.
But strange is good... and it's not hard to get to this conclusion. It's good to not fit in. Sometimes it's good to be the nerdy little metal-obsessed rapper who's drunk at his own show. Sometimes it's good to go broke and live on the road, year after year, building an underground power base and grabbing for a tiny little corner of immortality. It's good to be at least a little strange in a town where party hats serve as aggression amplifiers and most bartenders can read your thoughts.
Save us from people who can't tell beatnik from gonzo. Save us from creativity cannibals. Send us an 120lb nerd rapper, wandering in among the roaring chainsaw drunks, speaking his own incoherence but doing it so well.
He's at myspace.com/mchomeless
I'm at hawkseason.blogspot.com and hawkseason@gmail.com
Peace.

MC Homeless and the Temple of Doom

It's been the weirdest January on record... so warm, and it's gone by so fast. I think it's doing something to my poor brain chemistry, and I doubt I'm alone. An owl almost landed on me the other night during my walk... not kidding. I'm not down with all these omens. Next thing, someone's going to tell me the Spazz was built on an Algonquin burial ground.

I think MC Homeless is with me on this. He's more of a Mayan doomsayer, but that's fine. He's just as optimistic as the other apocalypse-heads I know. I mean, he does tend to sound a little victorious when he says “2012 is not a random number.”

I don't know what possessed me, maybe it was the sleep deprivation, maybe it was the brainfuzz that follows my favorite high gravity beer around, but I wanted to hear the Big Hate. Specifically: what grinds his gears? Mainly I got unprintable rants on foreign policy and addled recollections of questionable legality.

“Anywhere that doesn't give me free beer for gracing their stage gets the Big Hate. Let's see... shady promoters get the Big Hate. As far as towns, though, I don't know. Every place I played on the last tour was cool,” said Homeless, whose birth name is unpronounceable by human tongue. He's been on the move for so many years now, living all over the place and touring relentlessly. He has to have played with some losers in that time... dig deeper.

“Who stands out as bad? God, I've played with so many bad rappers it's not even funny. Tali Demon. She went on tour with the Insane Clown Posse, and she had a little juggalo following, that was definitely the worst show.”

“What the hell's a juggalo?” I asked. I was convinced it was either something he'd made up or an obscure Australian marsupial.

“It was a great show, they just sucked. A juggalo is, like, ICP's fans,” he clarified. I need to Wikipedia that word... I'm still convinced it's some kind of miniature kangaroo. “Their CD kept skipping and it was the show where we were opening up for the Coup, it was that one, where I almost fought. It was Tali Demon and her Two Loyal Servents, or something like that, and it was these two hillbilly rapper guys... but, to make a long story short, they tried to rush the stage and fight me.”

“Her people?”

“Yeah, and they got kicked out. Then they fought each other outside and got arrested.”

“They got kicked out of their own show?”

“They were one of the opening acts for the Coup. I don't know why they put them on, they were just horrible redneck rappers. ICP just attracts the scum of the earth. Anybody who still wears JNCO Jeans.”

Homeless paused, smiling at something invisible for a second. “It's like the hip hop version of trailer metal. They're trailer hop. Really bad, bad news.”

It was a really nice night, one of those nights where you can solve any problem with a minimum of effort. 27 degrees, feels like 19. Overnight low projected to be 9 degrees… sunny and 9 degrees. Cold enough to think. I felt like Batman, back in Gotham City after years of vacation.

There are heroes of the national underground, too. I won’t call MC Homeless a hero, but he knows what he’s doing. Pretty much anyone can hop on Myspace, put up their band page, and book a national tour. There are benefits and detriments. I was talking to a friend the other night, and he was saying that MTV ruined the regional nature of music.

I found myself arguing in defense of Myspace. It has, in the positive, brought a new relevance to the independent scene. Music needs to be approachable. Music needs to be made by real people, not celebrities. Maybe the fever has broken, maybe the curse of MTV has been lifted. Regional success exists! In the independent touring scene is a more complex and complete six degrees of separation than Kevin Bacon ever dreamed of. The giants of the scene come through every few months, but they lift us all to the rare heights. We're in the presence of greatness, but not in its shadow.

Amen.

Then, there’s the downside. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes the most innovative band, beyond what you could imagine, shows up out of the random and blows your mind. More often, though, you’ll dig through endless strata of imitators of the latest sonic fad… and they’ll catch on faster because they sound so familiar. Still, the control is being wrenched from the hands of the mega-conglomerate record labels. Why else would iTunes, which is quickly eclipsing CD shops in music purchases, sell self-released music? There's a demographic that loves the realness, the sounds that no producer has had a chance to ruin.

Homeless and I were placing bets on the outcome to a fight to the death between Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus. His money was on Paris Hilton, but I was hoping for mutual annihilation. It's so punk rock, really, to make your own name in the music industry. When so many people buy their way in, or are born into it (through the strange crosseyed dynasty that gave us this Cyrus creature), it's so pure to make records and tours happen through hard work and intuition. Anyone can tour once... Homeless has done it three times a year for the past four years, and he doesn't even own a car. How does he do it?

I'm not sure. He was babbling about something that really confused him in the brain. I didn't catch all of it.

“...Sublime cover bands that travel the country and put out DVDs,” he was saying. “I was at Best Buy the other day and I saw that this band, I won't mention their name or anything, but they're this big Sublime cover band. They had a DVD out of a set they did, just covering Sublime songs.”

We're through the looking glass, people. Scary stuff. Danger stuff. Strange stuff.

But strange is good... and it's not hard to get to this conclusion. It's good to not fit in. Sometimes it's good to be the nerdy little metal-obsessed rapper who's drunk at his own show. Sometimes it's good to go broke and live on the road, year after year, building an underground power base and grabbing for a tiny little corner of immortality. It's good to be at least a little strange in a town where party hats serve as aggression amplifiers and most bartenders can read your thoughts.

Save us from people who can't tell beatnik from gonzo. Save us from creativity cannibals. Send us an 120lb nerd rapper, wandering in among the roaring chainsaw drunks, speaking his own incoherence but doing it so well.

He's at myspace.com/mchomeless

I'm at hawkseason.blogspot.com and hawkseason@gmail.com

Peace.

How to Not Get a Job (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cave Bear)

I come to you now, hat in hands, offering a repeat entreaty. Do you seek employees? I seek employment. Maybe my people can talk to your people...

If you can use someone who knows music, then I can be of service to you. I know movies pretty well, but music is definitely my strength. I'm the worst kind of addict. I not only love and devour music, but I also make it. There's this never ending quest to surround myself with music in my life and work. Something about working in a place that sells CDs appeals to me, but I can't put my finger on exactly what.

My flexible is schedule (?). As things stand, I have a full time job and am looking to scale back and rearrange it in favor of doing something new. Specifically, pushing pertinent music on an unsuspecting town (seditious!). See, I'm the last survivor of a strange breed: the compassionate music snob. I can turn people onto The Good Stuff without making them feel inferior. We were nearly hunted to extinction in the '80s, and if you're nice I'll tell you my secret identity.

I've been told, when I've applied before, that you'll want to know my top five movies and albums. This is hard. I had the toughest time limiting to five (and couldn't always trim my list down), but here's what I came up with.

Sights:

Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

City of God

City of God (again)

Godzilla vs. Gigan

the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

2001: A Space Odyssey/Dr Strangelove (tie)

Sounds:

Red Sparowes: Every Red Heart.../At the Soundless Dawn (tie)

Tom Waits: Frank's Wild Years

Pearl Jam: Yield

Liars: Drum's Not Dead

Gifts From Enola: Loyal Eyes Betrayed the Mind

I left out some choice music. Maserati, Explosions in the Sky, Sleater-Kinney, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Mogwai, Lake Trout, the Black Angels...

***

Anyway...

I'm reliable, honest, and hard working. I learn fast and can defy gravity at will. I invented the telephone, the fax machine, and the helicopter. These facts-or any others-can be confirmed or denied by _________, who knows me pretty well.

So I can tell I need to close this bizarre diatribe before it collapses under its own weight. Please let me know if you can use me!

With clarity of intention of cleanliness of shirt...

-HS

Six Questions of Death: Jeff Blinder (published Feb '08, G-Vegas Magazine)

There’s a fresh buzz going around the national music scene, a buzz that you don’t hear much in Greenville. We’re the last to know, really, when something big breaks. People from the more cosmopolitan spots are quick to pick on us, the small towners.

But now there’s a paradox. The buzz is about Greenville, specifically, the Greenville underground. In the know, locally, are a few original bands (no cover acts!) and maybe two hundred music connoisseurs. In the know, nationally, are dozens of bands in varying stages of success who love Greenville.

They love the Spazzatorium, they love 21 Eleven and Sociology. People who don’t even know that this is a college town (not making this up) will come back again and again to play the underground, will brave the mindkilling seventy minutes of 264, will knock out their alignment on 14^th for the sake of a homemade stage and the most responsive audience in the state (probably).

The Spazzatorium Galleria is exactly that... an art gallery. It’s not a bar or a club, and it’s run in a fan and musician-friendly way. No one will make a fortune playing there, but it’s more satisfying than blasting a tired old Eagles song over last call at some doomed bar.

Jeff Blinder knows very well that music is art of a most sacred form. He books the majority of the Spazz’s acts and, with the help of a cadre of trusted locals, keeps the Spazz alive. I talked to him at his house one balmy December day. Comedy was in the air as his roommates shouted absurdities up and down the stairs. Coolest thing ever… kind of like giving an interview in the middle of a Mel Brooks movie.

Hawk Season: What is the coolest thing ever to happen onstage at the Spazz?

Jeff Blinder: There's a band, Kiss Kiss, who were pretty rad. It was kind of a more popular band, but they really let loose, and they ended up breaking a guitar and a violin and a guy was swinging from the rafters. It was one of those bands where I really wasn't expecting it because they kind of were this indie band. I knew that their music got pretty hectic, but I didn't know that their actions could be like that. Afterwards they were telling me that it was a release for them because they had some touring problems and they usually don't get that crazy but at the Spazz they felt like they could let loose a little more and it ended up with them breaking some expensive equipment. They were okay with it.

HS: Who, or what, is your biggest inspiration in how the Spazz is run?

JB: New Jersey basement shows. That was my first foray into the do it yourself scene in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and seeing bands that I'd heard about from friends play these little basements...not like big venues where I used to go, and just seeing how they got it done. (I didn't like) not feeling like I was in an environment where I couldn't just relax. At a basement you can do that.

HS: People tell me the Spazz doesn't have enough money. How real is the danger?

JB: Being a donation only place, and not making any profits, it's month to month. We have had excess money in the past, but that has run out, so December's looking real tough because we don't have a lot of shows. Basically it's just a month to month endeavor. We can never be as comfortable as we want to be, but that kind of makes it exciting too, you know? Keeps you on your toes.

HS: Who would you book if you could book anyone?

JB: I would be booking the Avett Brothers, Valient Thorr. Then I'd be looking for some of the bigger acts, maybe the Mars Volta or something like that, but those would be shows that would kind of have to be secret...There's a lot of bands I missed out on, who were kind of under the radar and then they got on the radar...They were in that spot where they would be willing to come through and now they've got booking agents and it's hard to get bands when they have booking agents.

HS: Like, which acts?

JB: Aids Wolf, that's one from Canada that I really liked and then they got a booking agent. Genghis Tron is even hard to get now, they've come through before.

HS: The Spazz wouldn't work in most towns. Why does it work in Greenville?

JB: I would say because it takes commitment from the people who are doing it, but also... I don't know. It really is an anomaly. As long as we can have music coming through and art and all that good stuff we'll do what we have to... even if we have to not do it there. There's a fight for survival, I guess. I don't know why it works, but I'll keep doing it as long as I can.

HS: The weirdest thing is the audience participation being so good and bands hear about it through the touring circuit.

JB: I just think it's, like I was saying, the comfort factor. It's not feeling like you're in an environment where you feel like you have to be kind of stressed out, kind of let loose. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it's like a house show, but it's at the gallery. I go out of my way to make sure everyone's having a good time and that no one's excluded and say “hi” and “thanks for coming” and all that, so I think they see that we like what we're doing and that the bands like to come here. With those two factors I think it makes them more comfortable and the audience reacts by participating more.

HS: All right... your sixth question of death (and the most deadly question)... the Spazz is Han Solo. Who are the Ewoks?

JB: I don't know who it would be. They'd have to be cute but kind of annoying...Some of the regulars, but not the girls. I don't know, I don't want to call out names.

Jeremy (a roommate -hs): I like to think of Jeff as Yoda.

HS: That's a good one.

JB: Donate, you will!

***

Go to myspace.com/spazzgallery. Check the schedule, yo. You might just find true love.

Anyway, until next month I’ll be drifting down the Tar in a tricked out rowboat and a Larry Bird jersey, drinking PBR tall boys and posting endearing gibberish at hawkseason.blogspot.com. Feel free, nay, encouraged to drop me a line. It's HawkSeason@gmail.com, kids.

Put on that pimp hat, it's going to be a long night. Until then....

cocktail napkin scribble (observations on a loser)

Fear drives the barhound...

Staring at dozens of TVs @ 4:pm on a Friday, offering commentary to his sidekick. 45 & embarrassed, wearing the official mustache of 1985... He knows that he can get on the train w/ the future at any time but has convinced himself of the opposite 22 years ago. It's easier, somehow, living in constant defensive cockiness, pretense @ full strength.

YES,

MOTHER FUCKER,

I AM HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE & YOU WISH YOU COULD PARTY THIS HARD.

New Year's Revolution

return of the peroxide blonde*this town needs a shithead*abject terror and more abject terror*Hawk Season 2012: a president for all seasons.*this nation needs a shithead

I have to tell you a story before I can tell you what happened. Sit down.

I've been up all night, racking my brain. I've been adrift all New Year's, wandering the usual spots with no luck. Turducken was doomed. Downtown was evil. Serpents and devils and shit buying drinks for other serpents and devils, the undead speaking in reverse tongues... working on their anagrams with renewed zeal.

See, three years ago I escaped Paris Hilton Island with my life and my life only. I had been there seven months, an idiot trapped by the promise of reality tv-delivered riches. I had been scalded with burning oil and set out in a fire ant hill. They made me eat sewage in a stunning $4,000 outfit and I still DIDN'T FUCKING WIN.

Since then, I've looked over my shoulder in dread that the Island Guard will find me and drag me back. Every time I hear a Justin Timberlake ringtone or a Honda Civic's glass pack I freeze and drop, paralyzed with fear.

But now it's the New Year. Several have passed since my unlikely escape, but the fear has yet to fade. I can't help the feeling that they'll be muscling me back soon, my fingernails clawing the ground as they pulllllllllllllllll.

So I've been drifting the defeated town, my face obfuscated with surrender paint, wondering if this will be the year we are all set free from Paris Hilton Island. The parties were death, the bars were vicious. I was surrounded by strange vampires, waiting to suck the fantasies out of my head and sell them to shitty authors. Panicked friends tried to fight, tried to stand beside me, but were all eventually thrown to the wolves. I wander this terrible town, mind clouded with bad thoughts, eyes clouded with the old year, begging the new one to come. Then, come the new one, I don't recognize it.

It's a wolverine in the nursery, gray at the edges of my optimism. It's the sweet taste of napalm on toast, the breakfast of a day already in shambles. Will this year be better than the last? Really, every year we say "it should be," but are never given cause to consider anything a win.

Next year I'm having a private New Year's. All my introspection this year took place in absolute crowd, and that just doesn't work. I hit all the wrong conclusions.

What I do realize, though, is that the beginning and end of a year are absolutely relative.

That said, I'm going to celebrate the Chinese New Year. By then I'll be ready.

Peace.