The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Line Out: Young Ones

LADIES: You Gotta Stop This!

Kelly O — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 15:37:57 -0700

Dear Ladies of Bumbershoot: I couldn't believe how many of you were doing this. I'm not trying to be preachy, but I started doing it when I was 13 years old, and it has been a roller coaster of quitting and starting (and quitting) ever since. It's easy to roll your eyes at the lung cancer warnings, but I wish someone would have told me about the wrinkles, painful teeth whitening, and cellulite. You should stop while you still can! Stop now! LOVE, Kelly O

Kelly O

All photos Kelly O

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T-shirt Slogans for the Children of Hardcore Parents

Derek Erdman — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 10:30:25 -0700

Sometimes life seems just fine and you're doing a bunch of stuff and then you get an email from an old friend which makes you miss them like no tomorrow. Jamie Drier sent me this list of things that should be on the t-shirts of children with parents who are fans of hardcore. He ended the email with, "That's all I could come up with on my walk home from work."

"Mommy and daddy made me in 7 SECONDS"
"Before he made me, daddy got checked to make sure he didn't have an SSD"
"My folks are huge fans of the YOUTH OF TODAY"
"They said you couldn't get pregnant in CIRCLE JERKS?!"
"Literally a MINOR THREAT"
"I didn't ask to be BORN AGAINST"
"No, my diaper isn't D.R.I."
"Whatever mom, why didn't you just DAYGLO ABORT me!"
"My mom must be from Texas cuz she really likes THE DICKS"
"Yup, my diaper is full of GORILLA BISCUITS"
"They took my binky cuz it was full of THE GERMS"
"I wanted to watch the scary movie but my mom said it would have NEGATIVE FX"
"Jeez, my diaper rash is REALLY RED*"

Here's a video from 1999 of Jamie playing in Planes Mistaken at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago. PMFS was originally from Peoria, IL. At one time I had so many friends from Peoria, I would nearly say that when somebody asked me where I was from.

*Jesus, I just listened to "Teaching You the Fear" five times. That song absolutely fucking rips.

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They're No Avril, They're Kind of Like Civet, and They Sound Like the Foo Fighters: Meet Cherri Bomb

Casey Nolan — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:24:31 -0700

cherribombband.com

Rightfully so, not a lot of "mainstream" bands are talked about on Line Out or in The Stranger. Yet I am constantly surprised that there hasn't been any "Riot Grrl" blogs, Girl Rock Camp postings, or really any articles about this band Cherri Bomb.

The group consists of four girls between the ages of 14 and 16 years old and they shred! They weren't started by a scouting agent or a talent show, but instead by guitarist Julia Pierce, who, at the age of 11, flyered all over Los Angeles to meet other girls to play music with. According to the band's bio, other guitarist Miranda Miller was able to read music at the age of four.

After four years of being a band, they have an EP titled Stark and a full length that just came out called This Is the End of Control. They have exploded in the past couple of months, opening for Smashing Pumpkins and the Foo Fighters (probably since they covered "Pretender"). Granted, it helps that their manager is Samantha Maloney who has drummed for Hole, Motley Crüe, and Eagles of Death Metal.

So what's up? These girls don't wear too-revealing clothes on stage and they write their own songs (which aren't bad). So why is no one talking about them? If I had a daughter, I would totally take her to see Cherri Bomb.

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Today In 10-Year Olds Wearing Tiny Evening Gowns On The Beach

Kelly O — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:32 -0700

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Little Girls Need Guitars

Kelly O — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:36:35 -0800

I can't say enough about how amazing local organization Rain City Rock Camp For Girls is. I know it's not until sunnier summertime, but Moms, plan it now. Little girls need guitars!

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Rain City Rock Camp For Girls: The Summer Camp Showcase @ Neumos

Kelly O — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:55:38 -0700

I think watching a bunch of 8-year old girls play on the Neumo's stage—fighting back stage fright, nervousness, and insecurity was one of the top ten neatest things I've ever seen. And when the group "Another Name For Awesome" got everybody to chant "GIRLS ROCK! GIRLS ROCK!"—I got a little teary eyed—and I don't even have kids!

Find out more Rain City Rock Camp For Girls right here. My great-biggest high-fives to all the girls who played today. YOU. ARE. AWESOME.

Kelly O

More photos after the jump...

more at www.girlsrockseattle.org

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Caperin': I Was Beaten up all of the Time

Derek Erdman — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:51:28 -0700

I received an email yesterday, on Easter Sunday. It was from a person that I hadn’t talked to in years; the last time that I saw him I was pointing a knife at his face. He’d come to a party at my house in Kent, Ohio to smash me to pieces. I was told that he might come, that’s why I had the knife. I was always terrible at fighting, everything happens so fast. I think people who are good at fighting can slow the movements down in their heads, for me it’s just flailing and then it’s over. The email on Easter Sunday was an apology for the knife event. It didn’t include an explanation, just that he was sorry that it happened and he hoped that I could forgive him. I don’t think I can reply. I wouldn’t know what to say. It seems kind of silly to forgive a person for something that happened so long ago. I have a suspicion that the apology is part of a twelve-step program and the more I consider it, the more I think I deserved to get beaten up. You see, this person’s mother used to babysit me long before the knife incident, and I think I told a lot of people that he used to pee the bed.

I can’t remember now if he did pee the bed or not. I almost remember that he did and that he had bunk beds, but my memory is so awful. It did get me to thinking about all of the times that I’ve been in fights, each of them in the Cleveland area of Ohio. There’s something about Cleveland that makes sense for fighting, but you don’t realize it until you leave. I just thought the whole world was like that; it was inevitable that you’d fight your friends eventually. Sometimes it didn’t even mean anything, like we were just characters from We Are The Lambeth Boys, sometimes having to beat the shit out of each other. A day later we’d pretend that nothing ever happened. I’m sure it has something to do with fatherless alcoholic upbringings or living in a place like Cleveland, Ohio. The thing is, before I ever saw anyplace else, I always found Cleveland to be wonderful. Now when I go back I only see sweat pants and rusty Buick Skylarks. Oh God, I’m an asshole now.

The first time I caught a thrashing was on the playground in middle school. I think the person’s name was Colin or Jason. Now that I think about it, starting with grade five, there was always somebody looking to kill me. I had a giant mouth and I dressed different than everybody else. Not by choice or by statement—I remember one year that I only had one shirt and one pair of pants. I’d have to wear the same yellow Garanimals shirt every single day, with the same pair of brown Bugle Boy pants. These clothes would get dirty and people would make fun of me, I think I may have been the kid that smelled like cat pee. At that age most children really cared about things like that, but my method of retaliation was hardly ever silence. I’d do something outlandish like speak gibberish or put gum in a person’s hair. Colin or Jason vowed that they’d catch me sometime when I was alone and eventually a group of kids surrounded me on the playground, creating a sight barrier. Colin or Jason hit me three times in the head with a rock that fit neatly in their palm, I remember seeing bright flashes every time it struck my temple. I woke up in a hospital hours later, my yellow Garanimals shirt covered in blood. I remember being scared of what was going to happen to me because the shirt was covered in blood; it was the only school shirt that I had. I don’t remember what happened next, but I changed schools tow months later.

There are three other instances of pummeling that come to mind over the next five years of my life, but they aren’t really of note. All of the fights I lost for sure, just because I never figured out how to fight. It seems at this exact moment that I’m telling you that you’re welcome to beat me up all that you want. I’ll probably just ball up and go to some weird place in my head that I’ve created for traumatic events. Look! I’m telling you this!

Jennifer was a girl that I went to high school with. She had a sister named Linda who was older and had an apartment down the street from where I lived. I would go to Linda’s house to listen to Smiths records and drink Cokes often. Jennifer was younger and still lived with her parents. She also lived with a girl with an English accent, I think it may have been a sibling though marriage. Somehow I became romantically tangled with Jennifer, but I can’t remember if it was grave in any way. She was cute and had a wide mouth and she used to call me “little boy,” which I really liked. I also remember prank calling her, simply because that’s a way that I spent a lot of my time back then. Shortly after the prank calling and very near the end of my senior year of high school, I was confronted by two boys while walking home from school. They’d asked my name and then asked if I knew Jennifer. After answering yes both times the smaller of the boys punched me in the face twice with his right fist. I couldn’t imagine how he punched so fast, the succession was so rapid that it made no sense to me. Nor did the fact that I just got punched in the face for what was either prank calling Jennifer or treating her poorly or both. I was bewildered for the rest of the day and decided to take a knife to school with me the following day. Due to clever scheduling I didn’t have an actual class until 3rd period, so I went to school at 10:30 am on most days. Most of the time my walk to school would be desolate because everybody was already in class. On this day, the day after the jaw punching, I walked toward school and noticed only one person at the corner of the school grounds where students smoked cigarettes. As I approached he asked me if I was Derek Erdman and then informed me that I was “dead meat.” It now seemed that everybody that I encountered wanted to punch my face. As he approached, I took the knife out of my pocket and unfolded it, locking the blade into place. I remember saying something really funny like, “I’M GOING TO JAM THIS KNIFE INTO YOUR GUTS AND GET BLOOD ALL OVER MY SHOES”. He stepped back and I continued to the school building. When I arrived the classes were changing and I gave the knife to the hesher who had a locker two down from mine. He promised to keep the knife a secret because he owed me because I'd written an essay for him about Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. I was pulled out of French class during the next period by a school security guard and was marched down to the principal’s office. There I was accused of bringing a knife to school and quickly spotted the person who had seen it. Since being a good liar had always come easy to me, I decided that was the best route to take. Over the next two hours I was questioned repeatedly about the incident and all of my belongings were searched. Denying everything and hiding the evidence worked like a charm, I was released in time for lunch, where I enjoyed pizza bread at a local restaurant while playing a Theatre Of Magic pinball game. Man, I hated high school.

Travis Ritter demanded that I make him a drawing of Devin The Dude but then never used it. HOW UN-AWESOME IS THAT?

Totally unawesome.

My roommates told me that I could eat the hard boiled Black Flag egg. It was cracked and they said it was "damaged". HOW UN-AWESOME IS THAT?

Totally NOT UNAWESOME.

What are you doing on Thursday? YOU CAN DO THIS!

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Neil From the Young Ones Made an Album

Mike Nipper — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:36:05 -0700

Um...I'm not one for the novelty, not too much...BUT I was just hipped to this album, Neil's Heavy Concept Album, last night!! Mostly it's silly silliness, as you'd reckon...uh, I'm assuming you've all seen the show (AND who could ever forget seeing THIS). If you've not seen the show, you kinda need to...like, RIGHT NOW!!! The Young Ones was an English TV comedy about four...um, very odd gentlemen, Neil was the "Hippie" character. So for his album he recorded some period sike songs done in Neil style with some of his "Right, yeah...so, llke I'm a tad bit burnt, right." ramblings to fill up the gaps. It's not Spinal Tap, but overall Neil's Heavy Concept Album is good! Hmmm, I guess I should look in the comedy section more often.

I was most impressed by his cover of Tomorrow's "My White Bicycle" (NICE CHOICE!!)...however, it was Traffic's "Hole In My Shoe" that was the 'A' side, and the song he performed on TOTP.

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10-4 Roger's Encounter With J Dilla

Charles Mudede — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:14:49 -0800

I have my bets on the future of 10-4 Roger, a local producer who has worked with Helladope and THEESatisfaction. I have this strong feeling that he will fill the space left by Sabzi's move to the Big Apple. After P Smoov, 10-4 Roger—that is my prediction. Some proof? For starters, check out his new remixes of the J Dilla:

Indeed, the stakes are high.

Graphic design by Valerie Penera.

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