a) Lonely Merch Table b) Ranting

Some people are good at hawking merch. Poison and Tobe are masters of this art. I'm terrible at it. I try.

"That comp is awesome!"

"That's a pretty good recording."

"We actually sound tight on the seven inch."

It's not that I don't want people to buy the stuff. Of course I do. I don't have good instincts for making people want to buy stuff. To me, the goodness of the merch goes without saying, since obviously I would never sell shitty merch. Doye.

I think GS (or even BB) should make more floppy disc singles and keep selling them for a dollar. Those are the easiest things to get people to buy.

Last night I sat at the merch table for much of the show. Save for our little 3" CDR, we had no CDs to sell. Just vinyl, tapes and floppy disks. We're going to put out a CD soon, we just found obscure formats more mystical and interesting to explore from the time we formed.

Now I'm not going to complain about people not buying our shit. That's their choice, and god knows we were a difficult sell last night. See, a big part of the band's charm is getting crazy and engaging the audience. That's what we do at every show. A respectable number of people have come to appreciate this, especially around H_x. Older people seem to understand us better. I don't know why that is, but I've been trying to figure it out ever since last night.

When I was in high school, I was attracted to the local music scene for probably the same reasons kids today are. But a big difference is that a "punk" scene in those days, by definition was pretty wild, noisy, way out there and/or sorta violent. There were no strata of really over-the-top punk bands vs punk bands that the jocks at my school would like. Punk scenes attracted people who by and large were into crazy stuff (music, culture, diy, etc), and the bands we went to see ultimately reflected this.

But because punk rock scenes are fun, they eventually began to garner a lot of mass media attention. Bands came along that could use this system to appeal to large numbers of people. It stands to reason that nowadays, a marketable-looking and -sounding band could be motivated by getting super-popular in the media. The possibility of stardom to me is a big thing that separates the punk scene of my teenage years from today. You know there are bands out there who are driven by this, whether they realize it or not. A punk band in the old days knew from the get-go that mass-media stardom was an impossibility, so it couldn't have been much of a driving factor in making their music. And I'm not talking so much about the original wave of punk bands here. Punk got mainstream attention then, but it was bad attention. Meaning, good attention. If BB got written up in Time because people rioted at all our shows, I wouldn't have a problem with that.

I think a lot of people today don't make a distinction between punk rock that is "mainstream", or not. And no wonder... there's nowhere to draw a line. It's a world of grey areas, just like all other aspects of life. As was the case when I was a teenager, I want to be part of a music scene where I can say "this is ours, not theirs". Somewhere along the line I realized that the coolest music and culture are a little harder to find, and that much more rewarding when you do. Obscure things are often unique, and I like unique.

On the surface, punk is more popular now than it's ever been, but I think that's a facade. I think about the same number of people like music and culture that is truly "alternative", compared to 1982 or whenever. All the extra people are really into something else.

But I think a few of them will join us, eventually. That's why we need to keep reminding them we're out there.