C’mon Give Us Some More Stupid Looks

Die Kreuzen - In School

Tonight I saw Fred Thomas play a solo set in Park Slope. Fred just moved to New York, earlier in the week he played in Williamsburg with his band Saturday Looks Good to Me and although I’ve seen him play a bunch of different times in so many different bands it felt like such a rare treat seeing him play twice in a week. I’ve said so many times that he is one of the greatest songwriters of our generation, a total genius at telling stories, at finding the huge truths in little actions, in making me want to live forever and spend that time telling so many people that I love them. His set tonight was great, a little dark, he charmed the audience immediately by singing the song where he spells out “h-o-u-n-d” and then kept everyone locked while he told sad stories of losing teeth, helpless friends, and most of all bravery. As soon as he was done I decided I would write about him tonight, about “Get it Together” or “Holland Tunnel” (because he just moved to New York, don’t you see?) or any of a million others that have made me cry and laugh and sing so loud, but then a funny thing happened on the walk home, and besides my new zine [1] has a huge part about his song “Disappearing” so instead it’s Die Kreuzen.

I think a lot about the impact that a song has on perception, not just the way its mood directs yours, but the way it can make the whole world look different. One summer I walked everywhere, listened to Shadow Ring incessantly on my headphones and was stunned to see how lunar and desolate neighborhoods I had lived in for 10 years suddenly appeared. I probably still owe Heather an apology for the time I showed up at her house after listening to that Jawbreaker song all day (“I just hear hot rods and gunshots and sirens”) and started talking so much shit about how I wanted to live in a brutal place, Oakland or Atlanta or Glasgow or something, that life is brutal and I ought to have to confront that brutality every day, look it in the face, hear the gunshots and screaming and sing songs about it. If I were a little bit smarter and switched the song on the way over, all the leaves and smiling faces of Portland probably would’ve kept me there forever.

The band that played after Fred did this one song, it goes “God only knows what I’d be without you” (I think) and everyone sang along. I know that people like it but it kind of ground a fearsome trench into my skull, and I ended up having to run out and carefully listen to music the whole way home to try and heal the rut. Fred suggested that I try Black Dice’s “Beaches and Canyons” for the walk to the train station, and I told him I was going to listen to “Bald Headed Hoes” but only one thing jumped out at me when I scrolled through the songs at hand: Die Kreuzen.

The debut 7”, “Cows and Beers”, and the first self-titled LP by Die Kreuzen are some of the best hardcore ever ever ever. The drummer from His Hero is Gone told me it was his favorite LP of all time. People say a lot of things about the historic importance of those records, the introduction of metal-ish guitars to hardcore blah blah, the collision of Midwest-style aggression with New York’s speed blah blah but on such a basic level nobody listens to those records and emerges unchanged, they’re violent and relentless and bleak on a level that surpasses any era or genre.

Park Slope is pretty. Isn’t it the Cosby show neighborhood? Looks like it, all tidy buildings and flowerboxes, no aNYthing stickers on the lightposts or pizza boxes in the streets. I like greeting people and having them smile back, and on the way to the show it was a good place to do that, shopkeepers watching the sunset and guys on their way home from work all grinning and nodding their heads in that gracious, masculine way. On the way back, however, everyone wanted to fight me. Everyone looked at me like I had crawled out of the sewer, they all clipped my shoulder as I walked past, some even seemed to know that I had hurt my elbow last week and went out of their way to knock into it. I knew that I wasn’t going to make it the 12 blocks to the train without catching a black eye, some part of me also knew that if I would just change back to the Pavement record I listened to on the way there everything would be fine.

It was just too good though, the guitars like catapults throwing my body into strangers, so abrasive and noteless, like a massive arrangement of percussion all pounding out the same vicious orders while that shredded-throat voice mutters about “fucking hippies and fucking jocks, talking shit man you don’t know where it’s at” and then it’s suddenly so melodic, the one guitar chugging out this syncopated riff while the other guitar is all cartwheeling and flipping in a flurry of high single notes, you would be stupid to call it a solo but it has the exact same energy. I love how he sounds like it’s not his fault, like he has no choice but to attack: “we’re gonna have to punch your face out!” I understand being punk in early 80s Wisconsin probably necessitated a lot of fighting, but the full line is “look our way, we’re gonna have to…”; it’s not exactly self-defense.

And so there I was, staring down strangers, muttering along with the record, “we don’t care what you came here for”, all sympathy and sense of beauty drained out of my body, replaced by the rhetoric of songs like “Hate Me”, “Enemies”, “Get ‘Em” and “Fuckups.” It’s hours later and my jaw still hurts from grinding my teeth. All these 90 second blasts of fury nearly chasing me down the street, and reminding me of being 16 and feeling that way all the time regardless of what was playing, my thumbs tucked and my head hung.

I doubt it’s actually necessary for me to say I’m glad I don’t feel that way very much anymore, but I can’t stress how important it was to have those kinds of records when I really was that paranoid and angry. By the time I had heard Minor Threat I was already certain I didn’t want to drink, but it was super nice having evidence that someone else made that decision and survived it, was able to sing about it and continue on with their life. It’s really easy to listen to Die Kreuzen play “I’m Tired” as an adult and jadedly think, “then why don’t you just give up?” But obviously the reason to not give up is to make the song, and then the song becomes a reason for someone else. I’ve had a lot of songs do a lot of important things for me, but nothing as great as that.


[1] new zines all the time! If you ever want one just email your address and I will send it to you immediately! Or Ooga Booga in L.A.! The Golden Age in Chicago!