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.

the Parable of the Moron in the Michael Vick Jersey

The moron is proud.

The moron parades up and down sidestreets in Charlotte in a Michael Vick jersey.

The moron argues with his friend on the shitty side of Durham in a Michael Vick jersey.

The moron checks his email in a computer lab at ECU in a Michael Vick jersey.

The moron is proud, the moron thinks he has achieved something.

Another moron, passing nearby, shakes her head at the obvious buffoonery of someone who would casually walk around in a Michael Vick jersey. Occasional famous morons defend Vick's sick actions, citing their bullheaded beliefs that dogfighting is "a sport" or "cultural" or "not that different from hunting." This is wrong, wrong, wrong and dumb, dumb, dumb, but that is all another argument. Dogfighting is a fashionable crime on both sides of the fence... it is fashionable to those who partake for the same vile/bloodthirsty/abusive reasons it always has been. It is currently fashionable to hate and speak out against the sick crime.

I've taken down actual dogfighters, and they are no joke. They're meth heads and they are notoriously hard to destroy, but when set alight will illuminate the night like the olympic flame. Few of those currently speaking against dogfighting would have the sand to take to the frontlines and actually bring these fuckers to the ground where they belong.

I digress.

The moron watching the moron in the Michael Vick jersey is herself wearing a shirt that says "Support Local Music" that she got at Hot Topic. She feels very good about herself when she walks around, her money going to a publicly traded megacorporation instead of actual independent music, while the great Spazzatorium of Greenville slips underwater like a sinking U-boat.

The Hurculean efforts of Jeff Blinder, the Spazz's everything guy since the Legion of Supervillains faded, are not going to be enough to keep the Spazz afloat much longer. Unless people come out with money in their hands this Cathedral of independent talent will be gone to time, much like the Library at Alexandria. Here it is in Jeff's own words.

THE SPAZZ IS CLOSING IN ONE MONTH...

Unless we can perpetrate a change.

Fellow Greenville residents and patrons of our space,

Our efforts to keep The Spazz going are becoming harder and harder to realize. This semester has been brutally harsh to us so far. All of the shows for the past few weeks have brought in nothing for the space itself. The few that have we were forced to out-of-pocket that excess. The last 4 shows had us out-of-pocketing close to $300 so we are at the point where we need your help in keeping The Spazz alive. At this rate come Oct. we will be unable to operate (Any bands reading this worry not, all shows scheduled after that will be honored but no new shows will be added.)

Ideas that might help us stay alive:

FIRST, AND FOREMOST, JUST COMING OUT TO OUR EVENTS

Without you we wither and die. Please understand The Spazz exists to bring together everyone and to have a creative outlet for local and travelling artists to showcase their talents. We are far from perfect and not all shows are gonna be your preference but we go way out of the way to book bands of all styles and genres and do so to branch everyone together and not just have a punk space...or an indie space..we're an every space!

Yes, shows will fall on nights where you have to study/work/want-to-drink, but making that extra effort is all we need from you. When deciding what to do with your night check out if we've got a show scheduled, listen to the bands when the bulletins are posted, and at least make that effort to care. The artists coming through need us and we in turn need you to support them.

Most shows we're ready to go by 8PM If enough of you come out we can be done by 11PM every time. This is ,of course, wishful thinking but even if we can get just 10 people out earlier enough we can kick things off!

SPREAD THE WORD

Most of you have classes and have met new folks this semester. How about a bring-a-friend-to-The-Spazz night! In all seriousness, spreading the word about us is so important. We cannot use the regular means of getting the word out about our events so it's up to you to let folks know what's going on. There is is quality live music and creativity happening in Greenville, it's just under-the-radar! If you spot someone wearing a rad band t-shirt, as profiling as it is, chances are they'd probably dig The Spazz so let them know about us!

ART MAJORS?

Any art majors interested in making up flyers for our space that we can hand out on campus or strategically place at designated shops? We could definately use your expertise in the matter. I do have access to printers (color even!) so even if one design is made I can reproduce the shit out of it. We could definately use your talent and it'd probably look good in your portfolio to boot!

COOL NERDS?

Any knowledgeable individuals that understand website creation that might be able to design us a site outside of myspace? As convenient as myspace is for information our dear Tom seems to have those bulletins go down at the most inopportune times. We need a website that has our information and show dates 24-7. Plus think how easy it would be to tell people to check out www.spazzgallery.com instead of googling us. Not to mention some folks don't have a myspace account (gasp!)

HELP!!!

Any more ideas please let us know! Hit us up with a message or post under the comments here. We need everyone to pitch in their ideas. This is crucial folks. Think of The Spazz as a friend in need. Motivate yourselves into caring and participating because we're dying here. Think of Greenville without The Spazz. I've been there and it's way lame.

STARTING TODAY ANYONE WHO WANTS TO MAKE A DONATION TO OUR SPACE CAN NOW DO SO VIA THE LINK (WELL, BUTTON) LOCATED ON The SPAZZATORIUMS PROFILE PAGE. ALL YOU FOLKS WHO JOKINGLY ASK IF WE TAKE CREDIT CARDS AND BREEZE RIGHT THROUGH W/OUT A DONATION. WELL NOW WE'VE GOT YOU COVERED! ANYONE WITH EXTRA FINANCIAL SECURITY PLEASE HELP OUR WORTHY CAUSE. NONE OF YOUR DONATIONS WILL GO TO ANYTHING BESIDES THE SPACE ITSELF. WE DO NOT PROFIT AT ALL FROM THE SPAZZ. WE'VE GIVEN ALL WE CAN AND YET IT ISN'T ENOUGH SO WE TURN TO YOU IN OUR TIME OF NEED. DO NOT LET THIS DREAM DIE. WE ARE FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT BUT ARE NEARING ROUND 7 AND OUR KNEES ARE WOBBLY. HELP US!

This is nothing new in my field. Asheville's Akumi and El Nuevo suffered this exact fate, though Akumi was pushed out of existence by the Asheville Cops (pig demon bastards). Westville Pub had a very brief spurt as the home of unknown badass bands and was an O.K. tour spot for a few months in 2006, until it sputtered and died from lack of interest or effort. Raleigh's scene has witnessed the death and changing hands of more venues than I can list, and Greenville's attic has gone to a bizarre afterlife hell in which it is a floundering club that has turned to underground pro wrestling to try and score a crowd. Most of Charlotte's clubs (the Milestone, Tremont Music Hall) are too weird and violent for anything but the most savage audience.

The moron in the Michael Vick jersey is more obvious in their criminal idiocy, but is the ideological cousin of the hypocrite in the "Support Local Music" shirt.