Eaglebauer's Record Collection

I pulled into the parking lot at my job this morning and there was a car near mine blaring Katy Perry's "Firework." If our minds as humans are built with the proclivity to turn as much as possible into a landscape of salience, why is it the annoying things that grab our attention the easiest?

I'm probably being a dick.

Lord knows I wouldn't infect most people with my taste in music, but god damn.

Anyway, if you like Katy Perry go ahead and like her and be unabashed about it. It was just a lot for me to take at 6:15 in the morning.

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 9

Eaglebauer's Record Collection

A handful of decades ago (decades? Has it been that long?), I was given a cassette copy of the Subhumans' first full length album, The Day The Country Died, by a friend and I've been a serious fan ever since. Over the years, I've collected originals of the four EPs that made up EP/LP, all of their full length studio albums and a couple other EPs here and there, which are hard to come by this side of the pond.

Since that first cassette was given to me, I've wanted to see them live and finally got to last night here in St Louis in a small room full of a wide mix of people ranging from teenagers in high school to people in their 60s (much like Dick Lucas is himself). It's something of a statement that the band was playing songs released over forty years ago to a crowd partially comprised of people who could literally be their grandchildren and the connection was still as real as I'm sure it was in the early 1980s.

The first time I was ever in a mosh pit, I was sixteen. And it's fitting that last night, standing next to me, was the same friend who was with me that night so long ago at another show in a another venue that doesn't even exist anymore. Much more than newcomers this time, we enjoyed the mayhem in front of us and, three spinal surgeries and many years of wear later, I knew the pit itself wasn't there for me anymore. I can still bench more than my body weight and I still think I'm in better condition than a lot of folks my age, but it was good to watch the youth enjoy the comradery I had when I was as spry. Its good to know the scene is still in good hands, if not tenuous ones. It still takes me back no matter how many times I see it.

That first night, I hadn’t told my buddy I’d never been in a pit before and I knew he hadn’t (he would have been a ripe 15 years old at the time), but I said out loud “I’m going in.”

I remember a sea of hands waiting for me and the newness of how welcoming it was, even in the mild violence of it.

I didn’t know how to dance, I didn’t know how to stand cool, and for the very first time in my young life, it didn’t fucking matter. To ANYONE. Not to me, not to any of them, not to the band.

I was instantly one of them, and have been since that moment. Without knowing me, they accepted me for what I was and it didn’t matter that I thought they were cooler than me. Suddenly, and at last, I belonged somewhere and felt a primal draw to the tribe, and it WAS primal. We were all circling, chanting...I could feel bodies near me, touching me…some male some female and even that didn’t matter anymore because there was nothing sexual in it, though it was deeply intimate.

It was a group of confused youth needing direction and a sense of belonging all coming together to collectively say “it’s okay…we can touch…we all need a human connection so let’s just give it to each other.” We became one, writhing organism together. As a lost soul, perhaps no more lost than anyone else at that age, I found solace in the tacit understanding that there were other people my age who felt they didn’t belong in the world and that the world really didn’t feel like home. “Home” had been a distant, abstract idea for me anyway my entire life, and the pop culture that had surrounded me was all based on the full package. To be famous and loved I was taught that you had to be talented and clever and good looking or you weren’t worth the price of a single.

But there, surrounded by that sea of hands, I felt for once that there was an entire army of souls saying “No.” Saying, “I’m NOT super talented. I DON'T look good. But god damn it, I am HUMAN and I MATTER. I have worth too.” That first time in the pit, I fell and someone I had never met picked me up. Someone else I’d never met fell, and I picked him up. And that’s how punk rock culture was defined for me in one night.

That is the embodiment of what the Subhumans was always about and in the increasingly turbulent landscape in which we find ourselves today, it was something of a serendipity to experience a little pocket of it last night. Thank you for all who keep that light ignited.

Final encore song "Religious Wars" below:

6 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 1

Eaglebauer's Record Collection

I used to listen to records with my mother when I was a younger child, seven or younger.

I knew of Placido Domingo and Herb Alpert. Johnny Mathis was a mainstay of summer weekdays and we'd listen to all of them together while she cleaned the house. She'd turn the volume up loud and smile...it was the only time I would ever see her smile that way...and I'd sometimes dance when there was no one else in the room in my clumsy way and close my eyes and try not to fall over. She had a proficient love for her records, and I learned the way that music moved her and wanted with all of my heart to smile the way she smiled when the turntable was spinning.

One Christmas in Hawaii we walked to the beach on the military base we lived on and built a sandman since we had no snow, and we came home and drank hot chocolate in the humid eighty-degree morning. I spilled my hot chocolate on the couch and after helping me mop it up with a damp towel, she played Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" on the record player and sat down and cried. For the longest time, I believed that I had ruined her Christmas that year and felt the vilest guilt over it that a child my age was capable of feeling, but eventually I came to understand that the music was reminding her of her childhood in the Pennsylvania snow that always fell in December.

And much like the smile she wore when we were alone with her music, I had never seen her cry like that and haven't ever since.

Mercifully, I never will again.

If you have a good relationship with your mom, don't let go of it. If you don't, don't give up.

I'll miss you mom. Rest well.

1 year ago | [YT] | 2

Eaglebauer's Record Collection

Rest well, old friend. You were one of the greats and your music will live on.

1 year ago | [YT] | 1

Eaglebauer's Record Collection

RIP Manny. Some of the tightest chops from ‘77.

Never mind that I read somewhere yesterday in one of those “this guy’s dead let’s throw him some attention” pieces that the Misfits came from the California scene and that the original version of “She” with Manny behind the kit wasn’t released until the box set came out in ‘96. Do publications even try to find people who know their asses from a hole in the ground? Sigh….

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 6

Eaglebauer's Record Collection

Just read an opinion piece trying to claim that Nirvana was actually punk rock rather than grunge. The author, in the same article, claims that the Pixies were also a punk band. Thoughts?

1 year ago | [YT] | 5

Eaglebauer's Record Collection

Bands with gimmicks and shitty songwriting are the bane of all that's worthy in rock n roll.

It's kinda...sorta neat that the AC3 7" I took a chance on features a drummer who, at the time of recording, was only four years old. And the little guy actually does a passable job. Unfortunately, his chops are showcased with two adults (I don't know if they're his parents or not and don't care enough to look) whose idea of writing a song is to take one guitar riff and one phrase and then repeat it ad nauseum for a few minutes with really no variation.

I mean...I get it. I have an Old Skull LP from the early 90s that was recorded when the band members were about nine years old and it's good for a laugh. But if you know that the only reason anyone pays you any attention is because you have a little kid on your roster or your whole band wears the same weird mask or some other stupid, gimmicky thing like that, maybe try something else. If I want a puppet show with shitty music I can always just go to the local Chucky Cheese.

2 years ago | [YT] | 4

Eaglebauer's Record Collection

I was out running and had reached into a drawer for a random shirt to wear. It happened to be this really ancient Black Flag shirt that I can't even remember buying from decades ago. Someone I've never met drove by me and screamed "Fitness isn't punk rock you fucking poser!"

I had to stop running for about five minutes, I was laughing so hard.

Fuck that guy, but also, that guy was awesome.

2 years ago | [YT] | 8

Eaglebauer's Record Collection

Live albums.

Never been a fan, really. The few that I own don’t get much air time at the house, and when they do spin on the turntable it’s usually only for a track or two (the exception might be my 999 Live and Loud from ‘89 but that’s really more of a nostalgia thing).

I call it the baseball effect.

I can’t stand watching sports on TV. Ever since I was a kid I just couldn’t get into it and I’d sequester myself in the bedroom or outside on weekends my dad was yelling insults at “you fucking idiot” on the tv. But I actually enjoy occasionally going to a ballgame and there’s something electric in the air when sipping a cold beer with a lukewarm brat surrounded by 40,000 of my neighbors.

I of course love live shows in person , I just don’t get the appeal of hearing the crowd at some concert that took place in a venue I’ve never been to and listening to the banter between a band and people I can’t see or introduce myself to. I guess part of it is that I feel kind of like a peeping Tom. I’m an invisible interloper in a relationship that’s taking place between an artist and an audience that I’m really not a part of.

I remember seeing Jonathan Richman live and being floored by the personality he puts into his live shows and how he actually kind of makes friends with the people he’s performing in front of. Every show is unique to the audience and played just for that crowd that night. The magic isn’t there in a live recording though and for the listener, it’s all take and no give.

If you like live albums, that’s fine and I don’t care, I’m talking about my preference though.

By the way, it’s totally not lost on me that I’m probably overthinking this, but I digress.

I was really excited when Rave Up put out a comp of The Daughters, early 80s Boston power pop that’s bouncy and obscure the way I like it. This happened in 2014, but for whatever reason I never got around to buying one until recently when I found one in a nearby shop in the D misc bin.

The point of all this is that it’s a live album. And it doesn’t say anywhere on the jacket or in the liner notes, or even on the labels that it’s a live album or that it was recorded live. So, if anyone cares, it’s a live album. Don’t buy it if you don’t like live albums.

Also, if you’re going to release a live album, even if you do it in fine print somewhere (let’s face it, the devil’s in details) please mention that it’s a live album.

God damn it.

2 years ago | [YT] | 4

Eaglebauer's Record Collection

Write a piece of rock tragedy in two senteces or less.

Here's mine, and it's nonfiction:

Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash on February 3rd, 1959. His wife did not attend his funeral because, on February 4, 1959, she miscarried their only child.

2 years ago | [YT] | 0