The Counterculture Criteria

SXX: No-name band in a no-name scene

Shawn Rainer, guitarist and vocalist for the Battle Creek veteran band SXX, kept using the words "working man's band" during our hour-and-a-half interview at Penn Station a couple of weeks ago. About halfway through the interview, I was really starting to believe it.

Rainer and his partner in crime Richard Nuyen have been on the music scene in our suffering little town for about eight years, an eternity when it comes to bands, which usually tend to break up, drop out, or move on after two or three years at the most.

The pair started with some other musicians as Bad Oscar, made some changes in lineups and have called themselves SXX since 2003. I loved the fact that the name doesn't stand for anything. It was just a design put together by their former guitarist, Phil Wiswell, that they thought looked cool. They dropped the design and kept the three letters. (They also lost Wiswell, replacing him with Jeff Weers on the axe early this year).

SXX not being an acronym, in my mind, is symbolic of the entire strained nature of the Battle Creek music scene, which, for what it is, is all about the working man. While large parts of other scenes (New York, L.A., Chicago, Detroit) have the pretentious undercurrent of music as art and its ability to change the world, most of the local bands I've dealt with since becoming the Enquirer's music writer have told me they're all about having fun, entertaining, "keeping it real," playing just for the glorious sake of playing.

SXX is the quintessential embodiment of that ideal. Three letters with no meaning other than "looking cool" is a perfect representation of the idea of the working class music fan: Some gruff-bearded factory rat still in his work uniform off of a 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. overtime shift out at Fort Custer, hitting the bar for a post-traumatic-stress drink and little bit of fine tunes, provided with grace and courtesy by the three guys of SXX, the no-name band in the no-name scene.

Working for almost a decade without a label, playing anywhere their music is appreciated, SXX is one of our Springsteens, or Lennons, or Pettys: Ordinary men making extraordinary music that tells the tale of our ordinary lives. That is not striking them short: Take note that the best parts of The Bible are about ordinary men, and Jesus was a carpenter. And when the great prophecies of our messiah musicians are penned for the Final Scorer, SXX will be written inside.

Virginia Tech puts black clothes in the crossharis

I was in eighth grade when Columbine happened. I was sitting in science class and our teacher put the news on... We all watched in horror and awe... The effect in our school was like a microcosm of the effects Sept. 11 had on the country: Nationalism, seclusion, exclusion.

When the Twin Towers fell, Americans wrapped their arms around each other and told the rest of the world stay out. When Columbine happened, all of the bright kids in my school held on to each other tight and eyed the dark kids with suspicion and fear. Anyone with any sort of antisocial history was thought to be in The Black Trench Coat Mafia. Anyone with narrow eyes or slanted eyebrows or scowling expressions or black T-shirts was a suspect, a danger, a possible killer.

Most of those the bright kids feared were my friends and I knew them to be harmless. They were thinkers, wonderers, wanderers, drinkers, but not killers. When the school made them stop wearing their trench coats and they had to pull their too-small denim jackets out of the closet, I felt for them. When people murmered under their breath as they walked by and when people pressed themselves against walls to be as far away from them as possible, I felt for them.

The Columbine killers were scorned outcasts. In a time of fear and pain and weeping, I felt, shouldn't we be reaching out to our peers, not scorning them and turning them into outcasts? I grew  angry with the bright kids, pulled on my black T-shirt and walked around school scowling, blaring Marilyn Manson on my portable CD player.

I fear that this week's shootings at Virginia Tech will have a similar effect. A DJ on the radio this morning said that the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, "...fit the mold" of a school shooter. He was taunted in high school. Rarely spoke. Dressed funny. Hung his head.

Will we be looking suspiciously at the dark-donned outcasts in our own schools? Will we start wondering about the quiet ones and pulling away, turning them into pariahs and treating them like lepers and fueling whatever weird seed in their belly that makes them uncomfortable in their own skin? Will we breed another shooter?

Not all black-clothed people are lonely or desperate or angry. But it's easy to make anybody feel that way.

The Blatant Beauty of a B.C. Battle of the Bands

Sitting in the smoke room here at the Enquirer, I was just told by a fellow music-lover/fellow smoker that punk is dead.

"What?" I asked. "Why do you say that?"

"It just is," she said, then told me about going to a concert for a band that advertised themselves as a big-time punk band and the band used wireless equipment. "That's not punk," she said. "It just isn't."

I disagree. I think the nature of punk is this ruleless, anthematic middle finger to society and standards and codes of ethics. Any paper or analytical essay that has ever been written about punk is probably false, because punk, by definition, is indefinable. Confused? Good. That's the point. Even what your reading could be full of malarky, and thus is the nature of punk. (Watch the movie "SLC Punk!" for a better non-explanation.)

Last Saturday's Battle of the Bands at Full Blast, sponsored by the Battle Creek Parks and Recreation Department, featured a good pair of punk bands: Bowling Green (pictured) and Bad Jackson. Beyond Repair also played, but I would call them more of an emo/alternative set, because their music had a lot more melody and strained structure to it.

Punk is the most extreme of the extreme of disillusioned, disheartened, heavy-minded thinkers and dissenters. Being punk is feeling that the system you live in has been doing wrong by you — feeling outcasted and misrepresented.

It's a natural train of thought that Battle Creek would produce a number of punk bands. (I've written many a punk song, though I am not a punk). In a town full of rock bands with nowhere to go, a good majority of the Cereal City's musicians must feel disillusioned and neglected... the basis for the punk mentality. The fuel of the Counterculture mindset.

Saturday's battle of the bands was a Counterculture fest. The misfit music kids of Battle Creek got a chance to put on a public show (at a place other than keggers or house parties), screaming and pushing and jumping and shouting and singing. The punk let out.

For more of my thoughts on Saturday's Battle of the Bands, see my column this Thursday in WOW.

Hard-luck band: If All Else Fails

I relate pretty heavily with the four guys from If All Else Fails. They're all high school seniors from Pennfield, playing out in a barn with a kerosene heater growling behind them while they scream and stomp and jump and jam.

I've played in a band for about five years, now. We started out playing a lot of open houses, then house parties, then coffee shops, one office party I don't want to get into. My drummer and bassist are both from Pennfield and know the guys from If All Else Fails.

But those similarities aren't why I really relate with IAEF. The real reason, I think, is the spirit. I interviewed the band for WOW early last week. Drove out to Pennfield Township, pulled up to the barn, straddeld a weight bench, watched them play their song "I'll Never Be That Drunk Again."

The music was good — tight arrangements, fast hooks, passionate lyrics — and the guys, evidenced by their headbanging and jumping, were clearly into what they were playing.

There was an undeniable spirit in the room, a joy in the music and the playing and the sound. And there was no reward. The band will play a show at Pennfield High School this Saturday to raise funds for a new PA system and possibly some funds to put towards recording a demo, so that they can move from house parties and open houses into paying gigs at local venues.

Most of the members in the group have been playing since they were in eighth grade. The band in its current arrangement has been together for almost a year, with little or no funds coming back to them for all of their rocking effort.

That morale is what I relate to. My band has stopped playing live shows the past year or so (drummer went to jail, then probation, bassist got two jobs and started school, etc.), but we still get together whenever possible to make as much noise as possible in a garage clear out in the boonies of North Avenue. Just for the fun of it, and I look forward to those three hours the entire time between when the last one ends and the next begins.

The guys from If All Else Fails are the same way.

That determination and fun and resolve and joy are the things that drive the music in this town. There are dozens of bands in little Battle Creek. Literally dozens. Yet, there are maybe only two venues in town, and those venues limit the kind of bands that they hire. That means, for some groups, there are zero venues.

Still, every year multiple new groups start up. Nearly every day in a barn, garage, basement or house somewhere, a handful of guys or girls are making the ceiling shake for no reason other than a love of music and a need to make a statement, if only to themselves.

I believe that that spirit and musicianship will be what saves the entertainment industry in Battle Creek. When enough people get restless, a call to action will be sounded and something will happen.

But every spirit can only take so much before it is crushed... Look at the hippies.

Listen to my interview with If All Else Fails by clicking here:  Download interview_with_if_all_else_fails.WMA

NOTE: Photo provided by If All Else Fails.

Mourning the loss of a PatriotAnother Counterculture hero bites the dust

Kurt Vonnegut, 1923 - 2007

After Hunter S. Thompson shot himself in 2005, I wrote a song called "All My Heroes Die Away." It seemed that nearly every person I admired was either dying or fading from glory or falling down in shame.

Kurt Cobain shot himself. Christopher Reeve died. Thompson died. Art Alexakis got in trouble for not paying his taxes.

And now, Kurt Vonnegut.

I read "A Man Without A Country" just last year and related to every word. Such a short book and yet so many profound statements in there on the War in Iraq, President Bush, the Internet, and more...

I have read "The Slaughterhouse Five" and "Cat's Cradle." I much preferred the "Slaughterhouse" book, but for all of the legend of that book I didn't like it as much as "A Man WIthout A Country." In that book, Vonnegut was at his most honest and kind and reminiscing and true.

He loathed the state our nation had been brought into. Felt like his liberty was being stolen away from him by the guised-up Patriot Act. He felt like he had nowhere to go where he could feel patriotic — a man without a country.

I think that this sentiment speaks to many of the Counterculturalists in this country. Their oft-Leftist causes were pressed down into the dust when Sept. 11 happened. After the dust fell in New York, the only things being an American seemed to mean was joining together, praying and hating the enemy. No more Free Speech as an honorary belief. No more debates about separation of church and state or abortion or gay rights. All of those things were considered unpatriotic distractions from the New American Dream of toppling the Axis of Evil.

So, for Vonnegut while writing that fantastic memoir, he felt like a man with no country. No flag to pledge allegiance to. The humanist did not feel human.

In my mind, to say that sometimes it sucks to be an American is the most patriotic thing a person can do. To say that you are disappointed in the state of the union is to say that you care about the union that much. You don't get disappointed by things you despise.

The death of Kurt Vonnegut is the death of a great American. A true patriot lost within the borders of his own country. A man with a faded red, white and blue heart, even if he couldn't feel it.

I will re-read "A Man Without A Country" in his honor. You should do the same.

NOTE: Photos provided by www.wikipedia.org.

The Battle Creek music scene:'Depressed?'

Sitting in a pew in Liberty Christian Church in East Lansing, I was in the middle of an interview with Flatfoot, a roots-country-rock outfit coming to Marshall this weekend.

During the interview, I asked them, "How would you compare the music scene of East Lansing with the music scene of the Battle Creek/Marshall area?"

The said the capitol music scene was relatively healthy, but they didn't know enough about the B.C. music scene to comment knowingly on it. So they turned the question around on me.

I thought about it for a second, and the only word I could think of to describe the scene was depressed. I don't know why that's what I said, but it is. That statement was followed by 15 minutes or so of garbled discussion about the artistic and economic health of Battle Creek, Lansing, and Charlotte, N.C.

Click on the link below to listen to what was said:

Download bc_scene_discussion.wav

Why would I say "depressed?" Is that really the best word to describe the scene around here? Would "slow," "hurting," "stifled" or "stunted" have been better?

I thought about it, and have come up with this:

The atmospheric pressures of Battle Creek are perfect breeding ground for original music-lovers. The best songs (in my opinion), come from the bellies of angst and heartache and stress and frustration. We are full of those things in this town: Economic depression, violence, boredom, stagnancy and year-long winters create a poor environment for contented living but a fantastic inspiration for emotional music. There's a reason that screaming rock and howling blues are the most popular types of music played by local bands from our immediate area.

Unfortunately, the bleak spring-winter hearts that create those great musicians (and we have many) and music-lovers (we have many, many) is the same situation that suffocates the scene for those people. Economic impotence makes it hard to start and maintain a music venue in this city. The venue-owners don't have much dough and the venue-goers don't either. When you have to choose between paying $3 to put a gallon of gas in your car to go to school or $5 to go see a music show, most people will pick the gas. (I wasn't one of those people. Ask my dad; he drove cross-town many times to resuscitate my vehicle.)

Violence has plagued every great music venue that I've been to. Airtime Skate, now defunct, had incessant troubles with goons brawling in the parking lot and the police having to pay visits. Ditto with Broken Bones, which opened up down the street and only lasted a few months.

The venues going belly-up creates an impression in people that there's nothing to do in this town (because usually there isn't). So they start going to Kalamazoo (which is a little better) or Grand Rapids or Detroit or even California whenever possible just to be bored. The whole thing creates a cycle that we can't get out of and ultimately leaves the Battle Creek-stuck scene-sweeper feeling ultimately depressed.

My guts, to quote Nick Hornby, may have crap for brains, but they were right on that one.

NOTE: See my column in Thursday's WOW section for more on this idea. Have any ideas on how to fix our broken entertainment scene? Send me an email (jhinkley@battlecr.gannett.com) or give me a call (966-0698) and I'll share your ideas with the rest of my readers.

Blues-toned roots music takes the blues away

EAST LANSING — I didn't really enjoy the drive. Not that it was terrible — the traffic was mild, the speed was moderate, the rotten April snow wasn't even that bad, since I was locked up in the heat of my car. But the sky was gray and that was putting me in a funk, worsened as the sun went down a little more with every mile, and I couldn't get into the record on my stereo.

Flatfoot: Somewhere between Sid Vicious on opiates and George Jones on high-fuel amphetamine. They're an East Lansing group, friends of The Gentleman Callers, who interviewed a couple of weeks back, part of the "twang-rock" scene the East Lansing town has apparently been courting.

The sound was just a drone to me, then, because my mood was sour. I was on my way to meet the band in a church in East Lansing, anyway, so I clicked over to the radio and tried to find some Rolling Stones, but there was nothing but garbled noise, so I turned the whole thing off and drove in acrid silence.

I found the church all right (Liberty Christian, on E. Michigan Ave. in East Lansing), but drove past it the first time through and got a little lost in somewhat-suburbia trying to make my way back around to it. When I got there, I parked my car, hurled the 50-plus pounds of equipment over my shoulder and walked up to the door, rang the bell. No answer. I called Aaron Bales, co-founder and lead vocalist of the band, on my cell phone. No answer. The sky was getting darker and so was my mood, and I already felt sorry for Flatfoot. The band was catching me in a bad day, through no fault of its own.

I walked around to the other door, peered in through the window. Bassist Jeremy Whitwam was at the back door (the one I'd just come from), looking for me. He spotted my face in the window and came running across the church to let me in.

He shook my hand and apologized, and I thanked him, decided to be professional and not let any of my poor spirit turn this into a bad experience. Jeremy led me into the sanctuary, a big room with a few hundred seats and a small stage at the front. High ceilings, good acoustics.

Aaron was up on stage already and shook my hand. Bales' brother and the other founder of the band, Jason, wasn't going to make it, on his way to the Carolinas, and drummer Danny Amori was on his way. We chatted amiably while I set up my equipment and they set up theirs, about the Carolinas, the weather, the music scene of Marshall.

Then Danny arrived and they broke into their song, "Granddaddy." Just like that, sour mood gone away. Even with the absence of Jason on guitar, the song was a full wall of sound, thickened by the slicing lap guitar of Aaron, gliding along the steel strings. Jeremy was all over the bass, low, high, slide, slap. Danny and his little four-piece drum set (something I haven't seen in a long time) kept a poundingly simple beat. The song was a journey, a rambling train down a rusty set of tracks with your ear right by the iron wheels. Aaron's strained twang was emotive to the point of pleading. He was begging the listener to feel his angst.

"... Well, I want to be in heaven/I want your saving grace/But it would be so much easier, Lord, if I could see your face..."

I felt it, recalling the times I'd asked the same question. I wondered what answer he'd come to, then remembered where we were and knew that the conclusion he'd reached was much brighter than mine. The song trekked its way on for about three-and-a-half minutes, and left me wanting in the end.

I am a music junkie (among other addictions), and somehow, Flatfoot had given me my fix. We spoke for about a half hour after that (interview transcription to come), and on the drive home, I was able to listen to their CD and enjoy the split personalities of their songs.

Download 15_grandaddy.wav

NOTE: Outtakes from my interview with Flatfoot (conversation not directly related to the story) will be posted later. Read my story about Flatfoot on Thursday (April 12) in WOW.

The weekend raidDrug man goes down in smoke

Twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of marijuana. That's a lot of dope. The most I've ever been around in my life is maybe $200's worth. But that was the amount seized this weekend in a joint raid between the Springfield Police Department and the Battle Creek Police Department's Emergency Response team.

I wonder how many heads will be without supply this weekend because of that bust. The average doper spends maybe $50 a week on bud. At $25,000, that means there are roughly 500 kids out there going sober this week. Poor heads.

Let's revisit the drug culture, as it pertains to Counterculturalism, to take a look at another side of this story. Drugs are pervasive in the modern Counterculture. Perverse use of intoxicants is not a requirement, but is certainly a staple.

The average Counterculturalist is the child of a bent, if not broken, home. Not necessarily loveless or abusive homes, just twisted enough to put a crack on the psyche of the child. A neurotic, compulsive mother who isn't happy with herself can be enough. A father who never yells or screams, but drinks a lot and treats the kid more like a friend than a son. A mother who relies on her child for emotional support during stressful times.

Things like that put a queer perspective on reality. You grow up in a home like that and you no longer see things the way other people do. You see everything with a cynicism and distrust that other people couldn't think of. Anything can hurt you. Low-grade schizophrenia sets in. One minute you're fine with the world, the next a spark emotion sets you into a funk and you want to paint everything black. God bless The Rolling Stones.

This sort of life is hard to live. The mind becomes exhausted. You can't think straight. The more it happens the worse it gets. Bruises on the brain become scars on the heart. The world gets smaller. You need release — you need to be somewhere, something else.

So one day you're in your friend's bedroom and he tells you he's discovered marijuana. "Take it," he says, "It'll make you laugh for hours."

You remember the times you've laughed — and you realize that it's been a long time since you've honestly laughed. Your belly starts hurting as you realize that you're about to become one of those kids you learned about in D.A.R.E. Will you become a rapist? A prostitute? Would you sell your own mother to the Red Chinese slave market just to score a hit later on? But you don't care any more. You just want to feel some relaxation, some tension. Escapism is heavy-handed on your brain.

So you take the pipe and lighter, and you breathe deep and it burns and it tastes terrible and you can't believe this is what you've been looking for. Your friend tells you to hold it in, so you do. Then you cough and the smoke comes out and you feel real bad about yourself. But when the pipe comes back your way, you do it again. Twenty minutes later you're laughing hysterically and rolling on the floor, mesmerized by the Marilyn Manson playing on the stereo and the black lights on the ceiling. You are not yourself, and that's exactly what you wanted.

So you do it again, and again. Take a two-hour vacation three times a week to another place. During those vacations, though, you do stupid things: Unprotected sex with strange women, driving under the influence, weird habits of property destruction and vandalism. And in the end, you get arrested.

Still... Isn't that your right? Pursuit of happiness and all that.