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Isn't it kind f weird how the stuff about Chris came out right before this started happening on a huge scale? I feel like it shows how movements are kind of inevitable or something...like growing out of the wave of society and not spurred by one individual. I don't know

Yeah, I was thinking about that too.  Just shows that punks are always ahead of the times.  For better or worse, I think a lot of millennial feminism and language around safe space, etc was probably hugely  influenced by punk/diy culture.  I mean in the mid-late 2000s we were using those concepts and terms way before they became pretty mainstream.

All I'm saying is that nobody deserves to live an entire lifetime depending on "kicks" to get by.  If one cultivates a degree of detachment/mental discipline, and bravely dives deep into the boredom depression hole, then it'll eventually convert into contentedness, spaciousness, peace, etc. and they'll be left wondering what the hell they spent their entire life running away from that for.  It's not a comfortable process, but it works.  I swear ;)

Contemporary society has all kinds of ways to keep us afraid and distracted from what is in fact our birthright.  Be a punk! 

It's not just Facebook, but electronic media of any kind...If you don't know how to live without it-for a few days at least, or weeks/months evens better-then you seriously need to examine your life.  Be real with yourself about what you use media to escape from...then realize the liberation of a mind clean from propaganda and negative outside influences...

Somehow not many people have noticed enough to comment on it, but within our lifetimes much of humanity has taken this drastic shift where we don't really have unstimulated quiet space/time, unless we put real intention into having that.  In the past quiet moments in the day were a lot more common without having to put in conscious intention to have them.  These days it takes more and more effort just to admit to oneself the simple existential fact of solitude.  Weird shit...

(says the man reading a message board way past his bedtime)

I've been listening to a lot post-reunion Dinosaur Jr lately.  I don't know why it took me about a year to get into their latest album-considering they're one my favorite bands-but I've been pretty addicted the past week.  The Lou songs are some of his best in their whole catolog.

All the sweet penpals <3

seeing Ghost "Mouse," Johnny Hobo, Spoonboy, Russ Substance etc at a picnic show (on that school bus tour around 2004) that moved into a crowded diy space in CT replete with cool zine distros, Against Me singalongs, everything..

basically all the shows I went to at the Death Star (am I remembering the name right?) in Silver Spring, MD

Delay, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Max Levine, and more playing the first show at our punk house in DC in 2009 and taking AJJ on a tour of DC

just a couple months ago in a hostel in Oaxaca I randomly met Jo and his friend from the English band that released the second to last album on PIX and saw them play a fun show at a diy space.  Even though I've been out of the scene so long already it's awesome that I can still meet cool people around the world based on love for plan-it-x music.

Yeah, I mean I feel happy for people, and selling out isn't what it used to be so whatever...But diy punks with Carson Daly?  I know it's not 1999 any more but that's just too much cognitive dissonance

Haha no it's hardly new, but I've been so out of touch the last 6+ years, some stuff still blows me away

Also makes me wonder, though, because I mean the whole thing was about way more than good taste, and that's all it counts as these days?  Makes it feel kinda cheap...

What the hell is going on? The 12 year old in me is dismayed.  So I was scrolling through Punknews.org today and saw that Jeff Rosenstock was on Carson Daly's show and Sum 41 is on Hopeless Records now.

Just a couple examples, but it still trips me out sometimes when I realize how bands/people I used to support and book shows for got really big, have opened for legendary bands like Built to Spill and whatnot (but then again who cares about bands like Built to Spill these days anyway?).  It's too hard to keep up with the times.  I don't understand anything...

I can't at all agree with the Mountain Goats, but the Beatles, Jawbreaker and Op Ivy make sense.

What about Built to Spill?  Operation: Cliff Clavin?

What?? American Football has a new album, and Look Mexico for that matter?  Jeez, I'm out of touch

Nah, but if I remember correctly he was known as El Soyboy before he became Tightpants...Unless I'm confusing him with someone else from that era..

Thanks!  This is great.  Just what I needed on this lonely Saturday night.

I can't believe Cool to be You came out 12 years ago already.  Makes me feel old even though Descendents were around way before I was born.

Also, shout out to Mr. Soyboy Tightpants, who gave me his Descendents tape when I was probably still in middle school.

This rules. 

http://dyingscene.com/news/california-members-of-jawbreaker-and-green-day-stream-debut-album/

I'm (or at least have been) a pretty huge fantasy nerd so I can come up a long list given a few minutes.  But definitely check out Guy Gavriel Kay, probably my favorite.  He's like a more romantic and lyrical version of George R.R. Martin.  Gene Wolfe is cool if you want something sort of difficult (for fantasy..) and esoteric.  Also, I've never read Lord Dunsany, but I recently read a novella by Lovecraft influenced by Dunsany.  It was called something like "The Dream World of something somebody" or something.  It was brilliant.  Haha, I'm tired.  I'll try to think of more suggestions after passover.

The first tape I bought was the Foo Fighters self-titled.  I can't remember my first CD...Third Eye Blind or Goo Goo Dolls probably

I feel like this didn't quite live up to its potential, but it's still awesome and I know at least a few of you on the board would be into this if you haven't heard it yet.  I actually haven't even really listened to Universal Themes yet.  He's been pretty prolific since Benji.

Description from Wikipedia: "Jesu / Sun Kil Moon is a collaborative studio album by American indie folk act Sun Kil Moon and British experimental act Jesu, released January 21, 2016 on Caldo Verde Records and Rough Trade.[2][3][4] The album also features guests Will Oldham aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy, members of Low, Rachel Goswell of Slowdive and Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse. Jesu and Sun Kil Moon including drummer Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth will play six shows in February and March 2016 to support the album. [5]"

Ha, "Touch of Grey" is catchy and I like it but I think that might be one of the more unpopular songs in the deadhead community.  If you have facebook then look at this meme I saw going around today:

https://www.facebook.com/Ratdogtour/photos/a.1429624377294753.1073741829.1407598196164038/1680407792216409/?type=3&theater

I just hope that whatever Chris ends up doing he keeps the music going.  The last Ghost Mice and Captain Chaos albums were too good to stop at that point.  They need proper follow up albums!

Agreed. 

Excuse my romanticism but...I've been reflecting lately how PIX and the whole folk-punk thing was such a special moment in countercultural history, and how lucky I feel to have been a part of it..even though some of the songs make me kind of cringe when I hear them these days.  It couldn't have happened at any other time in history.  It was like this last gasp of unbridled, innocent sincerity before society truly settled in to the current era of the surveillance/police state, extreme inequality, irony, mass madness, etc.  The PIX community meant the world to us, and I think compared to most of the rest of our generation, as maturing adults we all have a much firmer grasp on what a sane, healthy community actually feels like.

Highlights for me include my mom buying Dunkin Donuts before a DIY Bandits-organized picnic/park show in Shelton, CT because I told her there'd be a potluck.  Then being super intimidated putting them on the blanket in front of my hero, Chris, who I thought might judge them for being too corporate and non-vegan or something.  The cops quickly kicked us out of the park and then this big mass of sweaty kids moved into a small office nearby, unironically playing Against Me singalongs (remember when that was actually possible? or was it ever haha?) before Johnny Hobo, Spoonboy, Ghost Mouse (Chris solo), Russ Substance, and some others played sets.  Man, the singalongs and feeling of unity at that show, wow...It was actually recorded and released as a split live CD, but it feels strange listening to that now....In CT there were many shows at The Nest in Bridgeport...And the acoustic and Riotfolk shows I organized in DC (not exactly PIX, but the same orbit)...Oh, also PIX-board penpals!  Hello if any of you see this..

i'm not saying jewish and non jewish is the same but...um... saying that all jewish is spelled with a k and all non jewish is spelled with a q is so ridiculous i have no comment.

That's why I said almost definitely.  It's a generalization coming from a lot of personal experience.  I've just never seen Kabbalah spelled with a Q in the Jewish community, meanwhile new age/magician types often spell it that way.  So I feel it's important to point out that the guy you mentioned definitely wasn't studying Kabbalah within a centuries-old oral tradition like other Kabbalists.  The importance of lineage is debatable, but really, anybody can combine any number of spiritual practices..and as a spiritual seeker you probably want to know you're working with something that has a good chance of being effective....

Anyway, that wiki link I posted mentioned that sefirot in hermetic Qabbala is different than in Jewish Kabbalah.  So to then assert that the tarot represents the sefirot is pretty far-fetched.  I mean for one thing there are more tarot cards than sefirot.  But regardless of whose sephirot you're talking about, in their own ways both sefirot and tarot are fairly complete symbolic systems of psychological states and archetypes (although I wonder whether sefirot leans more toward the metaphysical than tarot) with their own proven methods for gaining understanding..so I wonder why you have to equate them?  As systems they each have their own internal logic, and if you take the symbol out of context (which is what you do when you compare tarot to sefirot) you lose a lot of meaning.  Maybe you create new meaning, I don't know...

For whatever it's worth, anybody who practices Qaballah with a Q is almost definitely not practicing authentic Jewish Kabbalah.

not worth much. hebrew to greek to latin to modern transliteration

its like saying Yahweh and Jehovah are two different things. hebrew doesn't have vowels, yada yadda yadda i give up

Um, actually there's a lot more going on than just translation or transliteration.  Jewish Kabbalah could care less about tarot or astrology.  Golden Dawn sounds like it was basically a 19th century syncretist new age group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah#Difference_between_Jewish_and_non-Jewish_Kabbalah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic_Qabalah

Madonna's version of Kabbalah is also pretty new age-y and vaguely cultish btw

For whatever it's worth, anybody who practices Qaballah with a Q is almost definitely not practicing authentic Jewish Kabbalah.

But anyway, I've met a transpersonal psychologist who uses tarot cards in therapy, and I know Jung talked about tarot letting a person get in touch with unconscious/archetypal stuff going on in life.  Seems pretty legit to me, although unfortunately we still live in a culture that wants to call that stuff esoteric and fantastical, so it takes some mental decolonizing..

Goddamn nostalgia...

Yeah, I've been super addicted to the new song.  Latterman had a huge influence on me growing up.  It's cheesy to say, but I literally would not be who I am today without their music.  So it really means a lot to hear new music by them.  I remember I was really displeased when they cancelled a show at a teen center in CT.  But I still got to see them play in a living room outside DC towards the end of their career.

I guess I've always been a fan of Long Island and NY punk.  It's probably not exactly the same crowd but were you ever into Two Man Advantage?

I just finished reading this.  Finishing the book feels like waking up from a long dream I'll probably forget in a few hours.  Carl Jung was obviously an influence, and the book had a strong mythic, dream-like quality to it, while still maintaining a solid groundedness in its way.  It definitely takes a master novelist to maintain that for 1150 pages.  While reading it I could feel the story working on me on a really deep archetypal level, like any good fantasy novel, but I still don't really get it.  Anybody have any interpretations?

Also, how does it compare to Murakami's other books?  This is the first I've read by him.