al / DANGERS

Almost done…

Al / DANGERS

Go west.  Die young.

Al / DANGERS

photo by Daniel Torres

My grandmother is plowing her way deeper and deeper into her ninth decade of existence.  I suppose to marvel is the appropriate course of action.  Spreading my thanks around to whatever deity she so wholeheartedly believes in for allowing us the pleasure of her continued health, wisdom, and embrace is overwhelmingly á la mode.  But does her aging necessitate a blind eye cast by  those of us along for the ride?  Does the simple fact that she predates television and hydrogen bombs guarantee her a day-to-day exempted from even the simplest of social graces, like actually listening (preferably with the benefit of her scarcely utilized hearing aid) to the questions I pose in her direction?  Or am I meant to suffer the cold, Easter-borne slap of her hand and her confident declaration that I am a “faithless heathen” with the loving smile of a grandson trying hard to conceal his exasperation with an increasingly snide and ruthless old lady addicted to equal parts CNN and CSI?  If the saying suggests that we’re to “kill our father[s],” what, then, are we to do with  our grandparents?

In some cultures, the elderly are put to pasture.  The has-beens are shunned and left to starve to death.  The artists-formerly-known-as are relegated to the bargain bin.  The rising stars snag an Achilles and take a half-assed foray into commentary.  We lose Friendsters to Myspaces, turn Myspaces to Facebooks, and ditch Facebooks for Instagrams.  We’ve barely had time to catch our Iberian-bated breath wherefore Das Reich has blitzkrieged their way to victory.

What I mean is, we are all dinosaurs.  The trick is knowing how close the comet is.

I have many friends that would furrow their brow at the thought of trading in their wedding vows, or mortgages, or diaper expenses for a hundred person show in a Bridge Town strip mall clinging to life support.  I’ve got relatives that actively suggest reallocating my hours away from the slip and slide of an Oxford Manor soiree to more prodigal endeavors.  And even in my most stalwart of moods, I would readily admit that an away-we-go with a sixth (sixth!) drummer is, at best,  an experiment fraught with a healthy dose of if, ands, and buts.  No one wants to be the one to take the soldiering dog, riddled with cancer and hobbled of gait, out to the shed with shotgun in hand.  Worse, no one wants to be that soldiering dog.

We get older.  The youthful exuberance of our more formidable days is tempered by the chips to our teeth, the cricks in our neck.  We make lifelong friends that lose their life long before their time.  We bury our heads in the sand, concentrate on the swirling fancies aloft in our own meager heads, and by the time we look up again the places have changed, the faces have been replaced, and the names land awkwardly in our mouths.  If you choose to stick around long enough, you become self-conscious of how you look, how you sound, the way you comport yourself.  You offer a high-five with the faint notion that the practice has been put on extinction, that the kids these days are up to chest bumps or hip thrusts or some other, more far-fetched display of camaraderie.  You schlepp a D-beat into an Indie Rock party and hope you’re not too completely out of style, that the laughter will still be too faint to be recognize as such.

Here are some words: staid, predictable, recycled.  Here are some others: vital, relevant, burgeoning.  The balancing act between the two requires the dexterity of a Romanian gymnast.  Or the willful ignorance of a Norman Bates-ian hack.

What I learned this weekend was: my blood still flows.  I may have a foot in the grave, but my head is decidedly in the clouds.  Thirty is just the number of years it took for me to fully understand the import of a stage-less stage dive.  Three decades were placed between me and my rebirth at Oxford Manor.  Someone said to me at one of these past two shows that they thought we had broken up.  I suppose it’s a fair question.  When is it appropriate to take my grandmother out to the shed?  How close is that comet?  I suppose these are questions I have a hard time answering.  There are too many songs left to write.  Too many shows left to play.  The noise still gets me.  The music still gets in the way.

Thanks all.  Stay tuned.

al/DANGERS

We are playing two shows next week.  Show up, or forever hold your peace.  Planes, trains, automobiles.  Reinvent the wheel.  We have a new acoustic set.  The first show is at a brand new DIY venue run by good friends of ours.  The second show is at Tuna’s house.  Finally.  You won’t want to miss either performance!  Deetz:

-In label news there’s a lot of new stuff up including “Do You Have Anything to Declare?”, by myself and Kevin Stewart-Panko, about touring bands, borders, and everything that blows in between, you can peep that HERE if you are so inclined.

-In other news, we are working in a new drummer right now who appears to be a fabulous new fit to our shithead cadre, and will be appearing at some upcoming shows and on “the continent”. Sad to say our friends in Comadre played their third and second to last show down here with Ghostlimb this weekend, and if all works out with scheduling, you will be seeing us at their last show June 15th at Gilman. Otherwise catch us somewhere else.

-In the wide world of 99% of experience that isn’t punk music, it was Al’s birthday on Sat (where i summarily, on accident, drove to San Diego without him), so celebrate with Al and his shitcake, because it is all downhill when he hit 45.

-Justin

I may lack the flowery language skills of our singer, but I grow the hell out of an artichoke (fellow backyard planters, this is the lowest yield thing in the universe: one full year since planting and about 16 square feet for two artichokes?  I haven’t eaten them yet, but if my socks don’t come right off when I do, I don’t know if it will have been worth it).

Anyhow, we talk a big game and deliver little, but we (and by we I mean everyone in the band but me) actually are actually writing music and have other concrete things in the works.

Promise list:

- Europe tour.  We’ll post dates more formally (along with a poster or something) in a short while, but certain dates are listed at last.fm.  Highlights are Fluff, Cry Me a River Fest, along with dates in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Serbia, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.  Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll be making it to the UK, but British friends: it’s Tour de France season, swim over, catch a stage, and then come share a show with us on our way through vegan cheese and wine parts.  Unfortunately Comadre won’t be joining us, but Painted Wolves will be, and if we’re all lucky, another special guest as well.

- LA, SF, and possibly other Californian shows will happen before we leave for Europe.  They could be as soon as the 20th of April, they could be just before we leave in June.  Either way, we’ll post here as soon as we know, so keep an eye out if you’re interested.

I think that’s all the news for now.  Hope you all are well.

- Tim

A vignette: I am sitting on a cooler, sloshed full of an inch’s worth of melted ice and neglected Hansen’s sodas, with a modern boombox-like machine finagling the finer sounds of “Bikeage” into the summer air, my chocolate-mouthed son nodding his head but far more interested in the growing lineage of ants erupting from a crack in the cement.  ”This,” I say, “is the Descendents.”

Another vignette: I am walking through a door, pushing it open without asking, neglecting my teenage daughter’s exhaustively pleaded desire for privacy, only to find her lying on her bed, face buried in a book by Dickens–some sort of “school assignment”–and I snatch that thing out of her hands and say to her, “Here, read this, it is by your father, and you’re old enough to not chock it full of Crayola marginalia.”

Probable end result: Fraternity row, sorority meningitis, Creed calendars, Skechers, endless resentment at their “artsy-fartsy” father.

Future history: Are we only as important as other people think we are?  How much life must we scrape into the world to leave upon it an indelible mark?  How important are reusable shopping bags?  If a man dies in the woods, how long before his family knows?  Cares?  What lies in the estuary between fact and fiction?  Who decides truth?  How different is memory from history?  Is all time wasted time, in the end?

Human beings: It takes great energy to see the benefit in being so constantly reminded of just how pitiful our ragtag strand of DNA is.  The key is being able to stare straight into the face of those human beings incapable of staring straight into themselves.  Demure.  Stick to the open road.  Stay slippery enough to avoid permanent peril, if at all possible.  Ingest the awe, recapitulate at a later date.  Put on full display the sad dance we are all so heartily engaged in.

Day one:  We (in whatever sense you’d like to define it) have begun, in earnest, to reconfigure life into an assemblage of wax-bound grooves.  Base camp.  With no sherpas.  No mortgages.  No children.  The largest mountains afford the greatest views.  Death should always be a possibility.

Preview: this.

Roused,

AEJBIV

Hello internet loving denizens of whatever backwater you choose to inhabit, finally some good news: The repress of the first Dangers 7″ is en route, and will be available to order on December 1 with the new Comadre full length over at our own dustbin-of-history/poor-excuse-for-a-crashing-parecon-business-model Vitriol Records (with a new website to boot!) There are 600 of these things, which will be available on both the Dangers webstore, label webstore, and shows whenever we feel like playing them. Now that the dramatic, threat ridden past is behind us, let’s talk about new things.

This week we are finally buckling down and working on this new christdamn 7″ to celebrate the impending apocalypse at the hands of electoral politics (jk!). Sad Romney mourners and raging Obamaites need not apply. This 7″ is going to be a co-release with a few labels and have all new material on it. You know how slow we work, and how we care even less about working slow. Hopefully we will see you sometime this year in whatever twizzdt dirtfreex locality you call home.

To reiterate, you can find that 7″ HERE, goes up for order Dec 1 (which is properly Nov 30th at midnight).

-Justin

There is a song worthy of infinite repeat on Converge’s new record, All We Love We Leave Behind.  That song is called “Coral Blue” and you can listen to it below:

Were I more capable of jealous rage, the quiet guitar-only section that begins at 2:29 of that song would lead to dire consequences.  I am, however, calming down in my old-age and have been outfitted with an ability to admire from afar.  The silver lining (and how rare are silver linings these days?) is that I will have an up-front and personal vantage from which to watch these elder statesmen.  Our ragtag operation has been kindly given opening act duties for the show, and we will do our best to minimize disappointment.  Should you care to bear witness, get there early and make sure to buy a ticket in advance at Vacation Vinyl or on TicketFly here.

In less yawning news, the digital dust has been cleared away from www.vitriolrecords.com, and a whole slew of new releases (including a pompy romp via hot sexaphonists Comadre) are due out.  Bear witness and eat heartily.

We are still slow as molasses.  Collectively, we are delivering your flora on whirls of heteronormative bar tabs.  This is only a partial truth.

Indebtedly,

AL / DANGERS