Blame

Blame – Afterwords

This was yesterday’s song. I woke up in my old room at my mum’s house and then drove to Newcastle so i didn’t get the chance to do this. So, for completion’s sake…

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Welcome Again

Welcome again – After Words

I know it’s been remarked on countless times, but, again, this age of mp3s and the access it has granted to all manner of recorded sound, far-reaching and instantaneous, has made it all too easy to experience and enumerate all the bands one could hope to listen to or at the very least have some personal documentation of. Without presenting any argument to whether or not this is a good thing (it is a good thing, but gosh it’s easy), i probably would never have heard After Words if not for someone ripping this record for some ravenous revolution summer-loving crowd.

No one is ever going to make me a tape full of exciting new bands from twenty years ago i’ve never heard of, so if not for some spoilt individual going through old record reviews in pdf copies of MRR or HeartattaCk, noting every band with the word “emo” among the thirty or so written in their review, and posting on a niche interest forum audaciously expecting mp3s of everything they ask, and me in their wake ready to pick up what results, there would be so much music i would have no idea existed. No matter how good my research skills.

Older people who have lived pre-internet lives, documenting them in pre-internet ways, are the best thing about the internet. Music and how it is remembered is a frustrating thing, especially that music which has to be actively remembered or learned from other’s histories. How we maintain rememberance and canonise those records that were on the right record label, had the right distribution, or were from the right city, leaving all others in obscurity, occludes so much worthwhile, unobserved music. That they were on Sammich, not Dischord (being from Atlanta i guess), After Words have otherwise remained largely unheard and forgotten.

If not for those cooler, older-sibling types who archive such previous endeavour and then make it available to a 99.9999…% indifferent world, how in-depth would our image of underground music for any time period be. So we can pretend we were there. After Words could have remained obscure (more-so) and it would not have made too much of a difference, i’m sure. I mean, it’s no One Last Wish, but great nonetheless, and to someone born so many years too late it’s nice to have available, and to have something else to add to my list of most wanted records.

Along with my pop punk one-man band dream, i’ve held a longer one with me in a one-man revolution summer D.C. type band. It all works out in my head. I’m not sure how to get that snare drum sound, but i imagine it’s tuned low, with a CS head judging from photographs. This will happen, you’ll see. I have so many ideas.

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